The 6 Best Bang-for-Your-Buck Garden Plants, According to a Master Gardener

Written by

Teo Spengler
Teo Spengler
Teo has studied horticulture and master gardening both in California and in France, and has put those skills to use in personal and public gardens in those regions. Spengler also completed an intensive 16-week program to qualify as a docent at the San Francisco Botanical Garden…read more
published Jul 22, 2024
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Colorful phlox, cosmea flowers on a flower bed on a sunny day. Park arrangement of colorful flowers.
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A lush and lovely garden makes the summer brighter, but to achieve it, you’ll need to squeeze plants into your budget and planting time into your schedule. As a horticulturist and docent for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, I’m familiar with that struggle on a professional level — but I’m also no stranger to it in my own garden! 

My No. 1 summer garden secret: Install flowers and shrubs that give you the biggest bang for the buck. What’s that mean, exactly? When I think of “best bang for your buck,” I focus on plants with low up-front cost, minimal maintenance needs, and the potential to easily grow and spread in your yard. I’ve got some favorites to recommend, and I spoke with gardening expert Monique Young, who sits on the board of directors at the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, California, to tap into a few of her best suggestions as well. 

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Flowering Maple

Botanical name: Abutilon spp.

Mature height: 2 – 10 feet depending on species

A fellow docent at the San Francisco Botanical Garden first introduced me to flowering maple (Abutilon spp), and it was love at first sight. I’ve always been a sucker for papery blossoms in bright colors, and the flowers on this large shrub/small tree hang and sway like bright little paper lanterns.

I brought home my first abutilon from the garden store, ready to pamper my little princess. It was about 30 inches high, with bright lobed leaves that give them the common name and a few of the charming lantern flowers in crimson. But that didn’t last long! The abutilon shot up quickly and by the month’s end, was laden with papery blossoms.

Two years later, the entire corner of my garden is filled with flowering maple shrubs, taller than I am — and the fiery flowers light up the space all summer long. And forget the pampering: These shrubs are tough and tolerant. I don’t fertilize them or water them more than every two weeks. 

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Hot Lips Sage

Botanical name: Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips’

Mature size: 3 feet x 5 feet

I first met a Hot Lips sage shrub at a friend’s garden in the north of California. I happened to be visiting while she was cutting back her bank of plants, and she suggested that I take a clump and plant it in a sunny spot in my garden. The rest is history.

Sage is one of those plants that are eager to grow. And these compact shrubs do not disappoint in that regard. Their two-tone blossoms — white with large, lipstick-red “lips” — just keep appearing through the long days of until the first frost in fall. Colorful and carefree, Hot Lips quickly gets to 3 feet tall and continue to spread, filling in empty space like magic. Drought-tolerant, it is a great perennial choice for low-water gardens.

Did I mention the sweet smell? In the San Francisco Botanical Garden, you’ll find them in the Fragrance Garden.

Bonus: Hummingbirds flock to these flowers.

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Nasturtiums

Botanical name: Tropaeolum majus

Mature size: Vines rise to 10 feet

USDA zones: perennial in zones 9-11, self-seeding annuals everywhere

Can flowers affect your moods? I believe they can, and nasturtiums — with their brilliant orange flowers and straight-out-of-Alice-in-Wonderland saucer leaves — never fail to give me a lift. They just look cheerful, happy to be growing, and their vibrant flowers feed pollinators of all types, from bees to butterflies to hummingbirds.

You can get bush varieties that work well in small gardens, but my first choice when it comes to maximum garden impact is the trailing/climbing variety. These twine their way up my backyard fence, creating a magnificent wall of flowers. They grow year-round here in San Francisco, reseeding themselves, too, but they can be grown as annuals in lower hardiness zones.

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Mophead Hydrangeas

Botanical name: Hydrangea macrophylla

Mature size: to 6 feet tall, 3 feet wide

Talk about an impact! Mophead has the toughness and resilience typical of hydrangea species but also offers its beauty in supersize: The leaves are flat, round, and as big as tortillas, while the flowers look like huge snowballs of petals, up to 10 inches across. These are the cool plants that change flower color if you alter the acidity (pH) of the soil — acidic is blue; alkaline is red. Plant a small shrub and watch it grow!

The San Francisco Botanical Garden has a fabulous display of different types of hydrangeas, and each one offers a different type of flower. I think mopheads offer the most bang for the buck because of the astonishing size and quantity of blossoms, but each species has its own beauty. Mopheads start blooming in late June, then keep right on flowering through fall.

Another thing to love about these plants: Hydrangeas propagate easily if you put cuttings in water.

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Bush Monkey Flower

Botanical name: Mimulus ringens 

Mature size: 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide

Not every gardener has the same, mild, coastal temperatures as San Francisco, so I asked gardening expert Monique Young for her recommendations. She’s an avid gardener and also serves on the board of directors at the Ruth Bancroft Gardens in Walnut Creek, California. Her town is hotter in summer and colder in winter than mine, and our “best bang for the buck” garden plant lists are very different.

Topping Young’s list is the fast-growing, low maintenance bush monkey flower, a North American native wildflower. Despite its common name, this is a showy flowering shrub. Its gorgeous flowers have five lobes and come in a wild variety of bright colors, including yellow, red, orange, purple, and pink. As a native, it requires little maintenance.

This shrub will be a crowd favorite, blooming profusely over a long season. On the West Coast, the blooms start in March and run through October. Some think that the flowers resemble grinning monkey faces.

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Dianthus Plants

Botanical name: Dianthus plumarius, Dianthus superbus, Dianthus deltoides 

Mature size: up to 3 feet tall, 2 feet wide

Perennial dianthus plants — known as “pinks” — also made Young’s short list of plants that add pow to your summer garden. She cites the plant’s rapid spread, graceful mounding shape, and long blooming flowers as their appealing attributes.

The perennial plants come in many rich shades — not just pink! — although the brilliant pink flowers are showstoppers when planted en masse. But the common name “pink” comes from the fringed edges of the flower petals, not the color.

Fast-growing dianthus bloom from spring through fall, with seedlings emerging from in just a little over a week. Some flowers are single, some are double, but all show off petals with jagged edges. According to Young, the Ruth Bancroft Succulent Garden plants these in rock gardens with succulents. She has them in her own yard as well and loves their pleasant clove fragrance.