Ask Mr. Smarty Plants

We trust that you intend to have these containers outside, at least in warm weather, as few plants and even fewer native plants can survive living year-round indoors. We would first suggest that you read our How-To Article on Container Gardening with Native Plants. Since you did not mention if your plants will be in sun or part shade, we will only be able to give you a list of plants we consider good container plants native to Bergen County NJ.

Go to our Native Plant Database and, using the Combination Search feature on that page, select on New Jersey for state, and "herbs" (herbaceous blooming plants) under Habit. You can run this search yourself, entering the amount of sun the plant will get, what height you want it to be, etc, but be careful - asking for too many specific characteristic may mean there is no plant that fulfills all those requirements and you will get no suggestions at all. Since we don't know what size pots you intend to use, we will not specify a particular height for our list. Follow each plant link on our suggested list to our webpage on that plant to learn its growing conditions, how much sunlight it needs, how big it gets and bloom time and color. You could even, again depending on the size of the pots, specify "shrub" or "fern" or "vine" under Habit, but for now we wll stick with the herbaceous blooming plants. When we searched as above, we got 1138 possibilities, and just scanned through them choosing ones we thought of a reasonable size and attractive; even so, we only got to the "E's" in the alphabetical list. You should first follow each link to our webpage on that plant to determine its suitability to your purposes. Then you can make your own list in the same way.

Agalinis purpurea (Purple false foxglove)

Amsonia tabernaemontana (Eastern bluestar)

Aruncus dioicus (Bride's feathers)

Athyrium filix-femina (Common ladyfern)

Campanulastrum americanum (American bellflower)

Campanula rotundifolia (Bluebell bellflower)

Clintonia borealis (Bluebead)

Claytonia virginica (Virginia springbeauty)

Conoclinium coelestinum (Blue mistflower)

Coreopsis lanceolata (Lanceleaf coreopsis)

Dryopteris carthusiana (Shield fern)

Erythronium albidum (White troutlily)