Growing Flowering Plants in Your Home Garden

Choosing flowers comes down to a few questions: how long the plant lives, whether it survives your winters, what it does for pollinators and wildlife, and whether it will stay where you put it. This page covers each, and the flower profiles below give zone, light, moisture and size for every plant on the site.

Annuals, biennials and perennials

Most gardens use both: perennials for structure that returns each year, annuals to fill gaps and keep color going all summer. Browse the annual, biennial and perennial plant lists.

Hardiness zones

The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map divides the country by the average coldest winter temperature. Each zone covers a 10°F range and is split into "a" and "b" halves of 5°F. Zone 5, for example, averages winter lows of -20 to -10°F, and zone 9 averages 20 to 30°F. The contiguous US runs from about zone 3 in northern Minnesota and North Dakota to zone 10 or 11 in southern Florida and southern California. The current map was released in 2023.

A plant labeled "zones 4 to 8" should survive winter in zones 4 through 8. Annuals don't need to survive winter, so zones matter mainly for perennials, shrubs and bulbs. Your frost dates, which set planting times, are a separate question. Look up both by zip code with the zone and frost date lookup, and see hardiness zones vs. frost dates for the difference.

Pollinator-friendly flowers

Bees, butterflies, moths and hummingbirds visiting your flowers also pollinate squash, cucumbers, berries and fruit trees, so a few nectar plants near the vegetable garden pay off.

Good pollinator plants have accessible nectar and pollen: single flowers with a visible center (coneflowers, asters, zinnias), clusters of small flowers (yarrow, sedum, Joe-Pye weed), or tubular flowers for hummingbirds (salvias, cardinal flower, penstemon). Plant in groups rather than singly, and aim for something in bloom from spring to frost.

Fully double flowers, such as many roses, double marigolds and double zinnias, have extra petals in place of the parts that make pollen and nectar, and offer insects little or nothing. They're fine for looks; just don't count on them to feed pollinators. More in Building a Butterfly Garden and Pollinator Flowers for the Fall.

Native and non-native plants

Native plants are species that grew in your region before European settlement, such as black-eyed Susan, purple coneflower, goldenrod and milkweed in much of North America. They are adapted to local climate and soil, and many native insects depend on them. Most caterpillars, for example, can feed on only a narrow group of native plants, and caterpillars are the main food that songbirds feed their nestlings.

Non-native garden plants, such as tulips from Central Asia or peonies and daylilies from Asia, aren't harmful in themselves. Many are well-behaved and offer nectar. A mix is fine; the more natives you include, the more wildlife your garden supports.

Avoid invasive plants

A small share of non-native plants escape gardens and spread into fields, woods and wetlands, crowding out native vegetation. Examples:

• Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) takes over wetlands and is banned in many states.
• Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) spreads by deep rhizomes, can push through pavement, and is extremely hard to remove.
• Japanese barberry and burning bush (Euonymus alatus) seed into woodlands, yet are still sold in some states.
• Butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii) and lantana (Lantana camara) are invasive in some regions but not others: butterfly bush in the Pacific Northwest, lantana in Florida and Hawaii.

Whether a plant is invasive depends on where you live, so check your state's invasive plant list or ask your county extension office before planting anything that spreads by seed or runners. If you already have an invasive plant, removing it and replacing it with a native alternative is one of the most useful things you can do for local wildlife.