We’re visiting Lilli Hazard’s garden in Fishers, Indiana, today.

I love gardening and caught the disease that gave me my green thumb from my mother when I was about 10 years old. She and I would pore through catalogs picking out those special flowers that would be added to our landscape. Now I do the same on my own.

Through the years I’ve become very interested in native plants, and I try to add them to my suburban gardens wherever I can.

I love variety. Here is a sampling of what I have. Most are perennials.

The airy plumes of Astilbe (Zones 4–8) flowers. These perennials do well in shade and prefer soil that doesn’t dry out. If you have the right spot for them, they can be one of the showiest shade perennials out there.

A cream—almost white—daylily (Hemerocallis hybrid, Zone 4—9) bloom. Daylilies come in nearly every color of the rainbow, but none of them are quite true white.

Another daylily, this one in a pink shade.

A tree peony (Paeonia hybrid, Zones 4–8). Tree peonies aren’t really trees, but they do produce woody stems to form a shrub over time. They produce larger flowers that herbaceous peonies, and their strong, woody stems don’t usually need staking to keep them from falling over.

Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa, Zones 3–9) is probably the showiest of the native milkweeds. It is, of course, one of the host plants for monarch butterflies, and one of the brightest blooms of the summer.

A beautiful and healthy rose, this looks like it might be the variety ‘At Last’ (Zones 5–9), which boasts great fragrance, disease resistance, and this wonderful color.

A hardy hibiscus (Hibiscus hybrid, Zones 5–9) with a clump of zinnias (Zinnia elegans, annual) behind it. Hardy herbaceous hibiscus like this are hybrids of species native to eastern North America and boast some of the largest flowers of any common garden plant. New breeding has produced varieties that stay shorter and have showy, dark foliage, making them even better garden plants.

In a shady part of the garden, an elegant lady fern (Athyrium filix–femina Zones 4–8). This species of fern is native throughout northern North America, Europe, and Asia.

 

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