There are hundreds of perennials out there. In this area, I think one of the most commons ones is verbena. It is a small purple flower. It is a trailing plant that gets about 6 inches tall, spreads about 2 feet, and likes the full sun. There is little maintenance required with this plant and in the wintertime, it will completely die back. In the spring it will come right back, so it's more of a ground cover type perennial. Then you have the purple coneflower. It spreads about a foot to a foot and a half wide. You will see it bloom from spring all the way untill fall. The flowers kind of look like a daisy, but they are purple. It's really a good butterfly plant too. In this area, the reulla, the Katy reulla, which is a dwarf reulla, does extremely well. It's drought tolerant. It blooms from spring all the way to fall, has a little purple flowering and you can find them in pink as well. They get about a foot tall. They do well in sun or shade. They have a flower that is similar to a petunia, so that has the common name of Mexican petunia. The plumbago is another popular one. It is more of a shrub. It gets 3-4 feet tall and about 4 feet wide and they do good in the sun or part shade. If we have a hard freeze, it can kill it back. So if you want permanent back to 6 inches in height, if you have a hard freeze, that will encourage it to flush back out. Plumbago attracts humming birds and butterflies. Pride of Barbados is a larger shrub perennial as well, and it attracts humming birds and butterflies. It gets 5-6 feet tall and the flowers are red and orange. You don't really want to cut it back in the winter, so if the winter does kill it back, you will cut the dead growth off, but you'll want to leave the good foilage on there.
