🌸 Echinacea purpurea (Purple coneflower)

• Description: Distinctive flowers with a strong center and downward-curving petals.
• Function: Attracts attention and bees and butterflies.
• Characteristics: Drought-tolerant, long flowering period, adds structure in late summer.
• Good with: Prairie perennials and ornamental grasses.

💜 Salvia nemorosa (Meadow Sage)

• Description: Vertical spikes with purple flowers – provides vertical contrast.
• Function: Frames and breaks up surfaces visually.
• Characteristics: Drought-tolerant, long flowering period, and insect-friendly.
• Good with: Lavender, catnip, cranesbill, and grasses.

🌼 Achillea millefolium (Yarrow)

• Appearance: Flat flower heads in white, yellow, red, or pink.
• Function: Creates “horizontal surfaces” in the planting – like natural micro-roofs.
• Characteristics: Very hardy, good for dry areas and attracts beneficial insects.
• Good with: Rock cress, sage, coneflower, and grasses.

🐝 Nepeta faassenii (Catmint)

• Description: Dense, low-growing perennial with small blue-violet flowers and gray-green foliage.
• Function: Perfect as a border plant or to soften the look around steel and stone. Creates a low, undulating look at the front of the planting.
• Characteristics: Extremely robust, drought-tolerant, long-flowering and loved by bees and butterflies.
• Good with: Sage, lavender, grasses and coneflowers.