If your coneflower garden doesn’t have these beauties

Perennials play a vital role in the garden, bringing flow and floral dialogue to the design narrative. Then winter closes the book on the season, leaving behind the bare ground where those flamboyant summer peacocks sleep, and you struggle to celebrate the beauty of a few frail skeletons for the next 4 or 5 months. We love the changing seasons, the vibrancy of birth, growth and old age, and we also enjoy seeing the bare soil of a well-tended garden in winter – perhaps often with envy. But when winter lingers, it’s evergreen perennials that keep the garden (and the gardener) steady.

1. It has good flowers, but the leaves are better

Name: 'Eric Smith' Bergenia (Bergenia 'Eric Smith')

'Eric Smith' Bergenia is one of the few reasons we look forward to winter. It's a wonderful workhorse and commemorates one of Britain's great plant men and characters. Eric would be a first-round inductee into the Horticultural Hall of Fame for his plant breeding prowess. Beth Chatto introduced this Bergenia in the 1970s, naming it after the extraordinary horticulturalist who bred it. The flowers are excellent - almost neon, a hot, courtly pink; but oddly enough, it's the leaves that come to mind. In winter the substantial leaves take on an intense purple-mahogany-chocolate tinge, putting this plant in the top ranks of winter interest ornamentals.

2. The Perfect Plant to Welcome Spring

Name: Lacistan Black Sea Iris (Iris lasica)

Lacistan Black Sea Iris is notable for its late winter to early spring blooms in some climates. Although it can be pruned with a distinctive bloom from time to time in late fall or during winter thaws, its main bloom occurs in early spring, coinciding with the blooms of hellebores (Hellephores species and cvs., zones 4–9) and early trilliums (Trillium species and cvs., zones 4–9). The pale to deep purple-blue flowers have a yellow band separating a feathery white field, dotted with an indecipherable Morse code of blue spots and lines. The flowers are borne low near the base of the 2-foot-tall leaves, and are best seen when the plant is placed on a slope or in a raised bed. The evergreen foliage is superior to its better-known cousin, the Algerian iris (Iris angularis, zones 7–9). We grow it near the entrance to our sprawling greenhouse so that we never get SAD (seasonal affective disorder) at work.

3. Evergreen leaves set the stage for fragrant flowers

Name: Chinese ypsilandra (Ypsilandra thibetica)

A related pair of plants that blooms simultaneously with the Lazistan Black Sea iris, this is a collector’s favorite, and not just because it’s one of the few plants that begins with three unlikely consonants. This Chinese species is fairly new to the scene, especially since Steve Hootman introduced it in 1995. If you can grow a trillium, you can grow this plant, as they require similar conditions and are in the same family. In early spring, 15-inch-tall flower stalks bear white flowers with a faint vanilla scent from a rosette of evergreen leaves. In China, we have seen it growing on damp, shady rock faces that are deeply covered in moss. It has been a happy settler in our shade garden, where it enjoys loose soil rich in organic matter.

4. It’s not a lily, but it’s very pretty

Name: Oriental marsh lilac (Heloniopsis orientalis)

Oriental marsh lilac is a close relative of the Chinese ypsilandra, and it needs similar conditions. The small rosettes of narrow, lily-like leaves are usually close to the ground, only about 3 inches tall. A provocatively tumescent, overwintering flower bud in the center promises that you’ll feel the earth move in spring. This plant puts on a show that belies its size. Pink-lavender stars on a lollipop stick in early spring don't suffer from comparison amidst the hustle and bustle of spring flowers because they don't look like anything else. If you have OCCD (obsessive-compulsive collecting disorder), this is not only true for other varieties and species, but also for different color patterns, double-flowered forms, striped-e The legal department warns that the plant is a gateway to lychee and even gold-leaf. The latter is unstable, difficult, and expensive, and if you can get it, it should be considered an indicator of deeper problems.

5. A Loosestrife That Doesn’t Invade

Name: Chinese Loosestrife (Lysimachia paridiformis var. stenophylla)

When we think of “lysimachia,” our minds often think of the beautiful gooseneck loosestrife (Lysimachia clethroydes, Zones 3–8), which devours garden space with a speed comparable to the Mongol hordes that swept across Asia and Europe in the 13th century. Or we might think of the classic golden creeping jenny (Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’, Zones 3–9), which spills over the front of a container. Happily, there’s a new sheriff in town, and, in keeping with changing global dynamics, it’s Chinese Loosestrife. First introduced into cultivation in the 1980s from seeds collected in China, it’s a law-abiding, respectable clumper. Around a prominent central flower cluster of yellow flowers in midsummer, there are stalks of narrow, narrow (the English translation of the Latin stenophyllus is "narrow"), evergreen leaves in a green halo. Recent collections, such as the one we grow from Jens and Remi Nilsson, are a huge improvement, being at least twice as large in all areas (18 inches tall and wide). This has taken the species from garden novelty to garden necessity, bringing much-needed summer color to wet shade gardens in a form and presentation that is unlikely to be echoed by other plants.

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