Finding good plants for your house’s front flower beds can be a challenge. Many shrubs grow too large and wild or simply require too much maintenance. If you don’t want to spend every weekend trimming and pruning rather than relaxing, consider some of these fantastic, low growing shrubs for your flower beds.
Firefly Heather
This lovely, easy to grow plant thrives in zones 5 to 9 and offers a lovely array of colors throughout the year. In late summer, the flowers bloom in a deep mauve color, and from spring to fall, the plant will dazzle visitors with an array of oranges, yellows, and reds.
This plant is easy to care for, surviving droughts, deer, and even harsh winters. However, it’s also small and low growing at 18 to 20 inches in height, making it a great candidate for a variety of landscaping situations, including in your front garden beds.
Bearberry Cotoneaster
The Bearberry Cotoneaster makes for a great ground cover in your beds, reaching a manageable 9 to 12 inches in height. This dense evergreen also adds a lovely pop of color to your front flower beds in the way of bright red berries and delicate white flowers.
This plant grows best in zones 5 to 8 and if you enjoy bird watching, this little evergreen will also attract local birds to your windows for your viewing pleasure. In addition, the foliage will range from green to reddish or purple depending on the season, giving lovely color even when the flowers fade away for the season.
Bixby Rhododendron
Looking for something really bright? This great evergreen shrub features bright and beautiful pink to red flowers and floaige which is dark green in spring/summer and dark-reddish in the fall and winter. It reaches somewhere between 18 to 24 inches in height, making it versatile and easy to maintain as well.
The Bixby Rhododendron is dense, compact, and is quite cold hardy. It grows best in zones 5 to 9 and is a great pick if you’d like a pop of color in your landscape without any extra work to manage it.
Winter Creeper
Winter Creepers are fast growing, low growing shrubs which can act as a ground cover, or even be trained up to 3 feet high if you’d like a taller shrub. These plants tolerate a wide range of growing conditions too, making them a hardy and easy to manage plant, even if you have a “brown thumb”.
These thrive in zones 5 to 8, and are very quick growing if you’d like something which can quickly establish itself in your front flower beds to perhaps obscure a window. Though they are invasive in some areas and can get out of control due to their fast growth, so keep that in mind before planting.
Creeping Rosemary
Want a ground cover with both beauty and substance? Then you may consider the creeping rosemary. Not only does this plant act as an attractive ground cover in your front flower beds at a height of 6 to 12 inches, but it can also be used in cooking, and its attractive blue flowers are favored by pollinators like bees.
In addition, this plant can also be used to climb up walls or rock gardens. Once established, it’s very drought tolerant and has a lovely scent. Grows best in zones 8 to 10.
Tanya, both a nurturing stay-at-home mom and a skilled crafter, is the creative force behind our blog. As the co-founder of Romney Ridge Farms & Crafts, she’s the editor and curator. She also runs the Romney Ridge Farms & Crafts social media accounts where we post new patterns for you to enjoy.
