Once you know your conditions and your zone, the question becomes what to plant. A perennial that returns every year or an annual for one big season? A shrub for structure, an edible for the kitchen, a pollinator plant for the bees, a native adapted to your region? This section is about choosing well – including the one axis a fit score can never cover: whether a plant is safe around your pets and children.
Filter to what you want. In the Explore plant finder, narrow your matches by type – perennials, shrubs and trees, edibles and herbs, pollinator-friendly, native – and by how much water you want to give. Every plant is tagged from its sourced record, so the filters reflect real attributes, not marketing.
Choose safely around pets and children
A plant can fit your yard perfectly and still be a poor choice for a household with a dog, a cat, or a small child. Fit and safety are different questions, and only one of them is about your animals:
- Pet-Safe Plants: What the ASPCA Actually Lists – how to use the ASPCA Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants database, why the scientific name decides it, a short verified table, and the emergency steps if a pet eats something.
The reference behind that article is the ASPCA Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants database, and it pays to know exactly what it says. It records a status for a named plant against a named animal – “Toxic to Dogs,” “Toxic to Cats,” “Toxic to Horses,” or the corresponding “Non-Toxic” – and it lists those three animals separately, so one entry can read differently for a dog than for a cat. What it does not publish is a severity grade. If a page tells you a plant is “mildly” or “highly” toxic and credits the ASPCA, that page added a word the ASPCA did not write.
Two habits follow from that. Search the scientific name printed on the plant tag rather than the common name, because unrelated plants share common names and you can easily read the wrong entry. And treat a plant’s absence from the database as unknown, not as cleared – absence can simply mean nobody entered it.
If you think an animal has already eaten something, stop reading and make a call. Contact your own veterinarian, or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at (888) 426-4435, which the ASPCA says is available 24/7 and notes a consultation fee may apply, or the Pet Poison Helpline. We do not give veterinary or medical advice, and we are not going to start.
By type and purpose
Perennials and shrubs are the long game – planted once, they anchor a bed for years. Annuals are the fast, changeable layer. Edibles and herbs earn their space in the kitchen. Pollinator and native plants pull double duty, feeding local bees and butterflies while asking less of you because they are already adapted to your region. The finder tags each of these so you can build a bed around the purpose, not just the look.
The categories are worth holding apart, because each one is limited by a different thing:
- Perennials regrow from the same roots season after season, so their binding question is winter survival. Your hardiness zone does most of the sorting.
- Annuals finish their whole life in one season and die, so cold hardiness barely matters and season length matters a lot.
- Shrubs and trees are the most permanent decision on this page. What you are buying is the mature size, not the nursery-pot size, so read the spread as carefully as the height.
- Edibles and herbs are judged on harvest, which usually means sun hours and season length before looks.
- Pollinator and native plants are chosen for what they support, not just what they show. A native is a plant that occurs naturally in your region, which often means it asks less of you – but “native” is a statement about geography, not about safety or about low maintenance.
One caveat on edibles, and we mean it literally: edible is a property of a specific part, prepared a specific way, and not of a whole plant. A tomato’s ripe fruit and its leaves are different questions. Nothing on this site is plant-identification or foraging guidance, and we will not help you decide that something growing wild is safe to eat.
If you want to go deeper on any one category, the North Carolina Extension Gardener Handbook is the most complete free reference we know of, with separate chapters covering Herbaceous Ornamentals, Woody Ornamentals, Native Plants, Vegetable Gardening and Wildlife. It is written for North Carolina, so read the regional specifics as regional: the horticulture generalizes, the species lists and dates do not.
Start with your situation
Choosing plants goes faster when you start from what you already know rather than from a catalog:
- You want the safety question settled first -> Pet-Safe Plants: What the ASPCA Actually Lists – how to look a plant up, and what to do if a pet already ate one.
- You do not know your light or soil yet -> Garden Conditions – sun, shade, soil and moisture, the inputs the finder actually scores.
- You do not know your zone yet -> Climate & Zones – find your USDA hardiness zone and your frost dates before you shop for perennials.
- You want a shortlist right now -> the Explore plant finder to filter by type and water, or the plant recommender if you would rather answer a few questions and be handed a list.
- You are growing indoors instead -> Smart & Indoor Gardens – countertop hydroponics, where light and pods replace sun and soil.
What choosing plants can and cannot tell you
This is the part most plant lists leave out. A fit score is a filter, not a verdict, and here is exactly where ours stops.
A hardiness zone is a winter-cold measure and nothing else. The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map reports a location’s average annual extreme minimum temperature – the average of each year’s single coldest night, per the USDA map methodology. It says nothing about summer heat, humidity, rainfall or soil. A cool damp coastal town and a hot dry inland valley can share a zone and still want completely different plants.
One ZIP code can span more than one zone. Zone boundaries run through neighborhoods, especially in hilly or coastal terrain, and your own yard adds microclimates the national map cannot see. If a line runs near your address, plan for the colder side.
Timing is a separate question from survival. Your zone tells you what can live through your winter, not when it is safe to plant. That comes from local frost dates, which are averages across years rather than guarantees, as The Old Farmer’s Almanac explains.
Safety is not in the fit score at all. The finder scores where a plant will thrive. It does not score what happens if your dog chews it. A high fit score and a toxic ASPCA status describe the same plant all the time. Run every shortlisted plant through the ASPCA database before it goes in the ground.
And a tag is not a measurement. Our records come from sourced plant data, so a filter reflects a real recorded attribute – but a recorded attribute is still a general one. Your bed, your drainage, and the wall that holds afternoon heat are yours to judge.
Where should I start when choosing plants?
Start with the two things you cannot change: your conditions and your zone. Sun, soil and moisture decide what can grow in a given bed, and your hardiness zone decides what survives the winter there. Only then does type – perennial, shrub, edible, pollinator, native – become a useful question.
Should I plant a perennial or an annual?
It depends on what you want from the space. A perennial returns from the same roots each year, so it is the better choice for structure and for beds you do not want to replant, and its limiting factor is winter cold. An annual dies at the end of the season, which makes it the changeable layer and puts season length, not cold hardiness, in charge.
Are native plants automatically safe for pets?
No. “Native” describes where a plant occurs naturally, not how it affects an animal that eats it. Plenty of regional natives are listed as toxic to dogs or cats. Check a native on the ASPCA Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants database exactly as you would check anything else.
Do I really have to look up every plant on the ASPCA list?
If you have a dog, a cat, a horse, or a small child who plays in that bed, yes – and it takes about a minute per plant. The database lists dogs, cats and horses separately, so check the animal you actually have, search by scientific name, and remember that a plant missing from the list is unknown rather than proven safe.
Does a high fit score mean a plant is a good choice?
It means the plant is likely to survive and grow well in your conditions. It does not mean the plant is safe around your animals, the right mature size for the spot, or what you actually want to look at. Fit is the first filter, not the decision.