Walkway Perennials for Lasting Beauty

Buddleia (Butterfly Bush)

Butterfly bush is a beautiful, fast growing shrub that attracts butterflies and hummingbirds to your garden all year round. Walk through their masses of sweetly scented purple, pink or white flowers in late summer to autumn, when many other plants have long since stopped blooming.

Here’s a tip:Buddleia flowers only provide nectar to adult butterflies. For an ultimate butterfly haven, try planting some Aster and Dill nearby to give them a place to lay their eggs.

Lilies

Nothing makes a statement like fresh blooming lilies. Whether you want a blanket of Stargazers (Lilium orientalis) or the towering, stately blooms of a trumpet, plant these bulbs in the late fall and watch them come back bigger and better every year.

Here’s a tip: in garden beds and walkways, lilies benefit from the presence of water-sipping, low to the ground plants to protect their roots from drying up. Add in some Cosmos or Aster for a boost in health and beauty.

Night-blooming jasmine (Cestrum Nocturnum)

Believe it or not, night-blooming jasmine isn’t actually a true jasmine, it’s a tropical evergreen native to the Caribbean and Central America (shhh)

Plant this flowering vine along any walkway or patio to enjoy its almost intoxicating scent and clusters of tiny white flowers.

Here’s a tip: Because this plant is technically in the nightshade family, it produces branches full of attractive, but toxic, white berries. Clip them off as soon as the blooms die down for safety, or if you don’t have any little hands in the house that might reach for them, leave them there and enjoy.

Creeping Thyme

Creeping Thyme’s beautiful carpet of red to white flowers might be enough to send you out to the garden store right away, but if you’re not 100% sold yet, here are a few other benefits: Besides being an incredibly hardy groundcover that can be walked across without a fuss, it’s also deer resistant, edible and bee-friendly!

Here’s a tip: Creeping Thyme is so hardy that it can be used as a living walking path. Prune it down in the spring after the small, sweetly scented flowers are spent to keep it low profile and steppable, or let it grow tall and wild. Either way, we’re pretty sure you’ll love it.

Lavender

Who could forget a classic? Lavender’s sweet scent and antibacterial properties have made it a favorite of soap makers, perfumers and chefs for centuries. Plant any of the 45 species of lavender and counting for a bright, classic bloom that comes back year after year.

Here’s a tip: With so many varieties to choose from, start with a classic like English, French or Spanish Lavender and branch out from there