25 White and Silver Plants Perfect for Creating Moon Gardens

Gardens can be magical at any time of day, but there is something especially magical about gardens as dusk falls, the edges blur and reality recedes the tiniest bit. Isn’t that the time when it’s easiest to believe in fairies, magic and another dimension just beyond our senses? For many of us, first thing in the morning and late in the day is when we most often have time to spend in our gardens. As the light dims, the colors of the rainbow start to recede. However, as the moon rises, white flowers and silver foliage take central stage, seeming to glow with otherworldly light. If you haven’t considered the joys of a white garden before, now might be the perfect time to add some white to your garden or even transform a portion of your garden into an all-white and silver moon garden.

Diamond Snow^® and Diamond Frost^® Euphorbia

Diamond Snow and Diamond Frost are perfect to kick off our list of white plants. These plants are as close to indestructible as you can get with a living plant. They love heat, don't mind some drought stress, bloom non-stop, don’t need to be deadheaded and will grow merrily all season with on application of controlled release plant food. Diamond Snow has double flowers (they’re actually bracts, but we all call them flowers), a dense habit and creates a chunk of color when planted in combination recipes. Diamond Frost is a champion weaver and mingler, mixing in with the other components to create a wonderful combination of textures and colors.

Best in Part Sun to Sun, but can tolerate shade. 12-18” tall. Annual.

Snow Princess^® Lobularia

Sweet alyssum not only provides a mass of white blossoms for moon gardens—it adds the element of fragrance, too. Its sweet scent is unmistakable and always welcome, especially as it floats in on a soft evening breeze where you are relaxing after a long day. Since Snow Princess is so heat tolerant and doesn’t go to seed, you’ll be able to enjoy its non-stop blooms from planting time until frost.

Part sun to sun. 10-16” tall, spreading 2-4’ wide. Annual.

Superbells^® Over Easy^™ Calibrachoa

Light up your patio table or deck boxes with this large-flowered white calibrachoa that glows in the moonlight. By day, you’ll notice its buttery yellow center and know exactly why it was named Over Easy. By night, you’ll enjoy its glimmering white petals that fill, then spill, over the edges of your containers. Try pairing it with Angelface^® Cascade Snow Angelonia and Stratosphere^™ White Gaura for an all-white flowered combination in a full sun container.

Part sun to sun. 6-12” tall. Annual.

Superbena^® Whiteout^™ Verbena

Superbena verbena is an incredibly versatile and floriferous annual that can be planted in hanging baskets, upright patio pots, window boxes and in the landscape. No deadheading is needed to keep it blooming strong all the way from planting time until frost. Superbena Whiteout is one of our largest-flowered verbenas, producing impressive clusters of snow white blossoms that butterflies enjoy but deer do not.

Try using Superbena Whiteout in our Vanilla Milkshake recipe in a hanging basket or upright container combined with two more outstanding white blooms: Boldly^® White geraniums and Laguna^® Cloud White^™ lobelia.

Part sun to sun. 6-12” tall, spreading up to 30”. Annual.

Supertunia Vista^® Snowdrift^™ Petunia

Perhaps the easiest way to fill a bed with white is to plant a few Supertunia Vista Snowdrift plants and let them run rampant. These vigorous, tough,
easy-to-grow plants are as close to a slam dunk as you can get with a plant. A single plant covers several feet of space, adds height and will overrun smaller plants if you don’t give it enough elbow room. The extreme vigor, intense flower coverage and fantastic garden performance is what makes a Supertunia Vistas the petunias anywhere.

Part Sun to Sun. 12-24” Tall. Annual.

Heart to Heart^® ‘White Wonder’ Caladium

The bold, white leaves of this caladium act like reflectors in the evening, bouncing back the moonlight to brighten up the garden. Unlike many white varieties of caladium, ‘White Wonder’ is unusual in that it will grow in both sun and shade, plus it grows well in containers and the landscape. That makes this a showy plant you can enjoy just about anywhere.

Sun or shade. 15-20” tall. Annual.

Rockapulco^® White Impatiens

With blossoms that resemble miniature roses, this elegant double impatiens variety will brighten up your moon garden or patio containers all season long. Its self-cleaning flowers bloom continuously from planting time until fall and appreciate regular feeding with our water soluble plant food. This is a beautiful option if your moon garden is located in a shady spot. It pairs perfectly with ‘White Wonder’ caladiums.

Part shade to shade. 10-20” tall. Annual.

Proven Accents^® Silver Bullet^® Artemisia

It isn’t just white flowers that seem to glow in low light, silver does much the same thing. Silver Bullet is a very vigorous annual groundcover and the perfect component to mix with other vigorous plants like our Supertunia Vistas. The fuzzy foliage adds an extra dimension of interest – it’s very touchable. Use it to fill space and to create contrast and texture with otherwise all white plantings.

Full Sun. 6-10” Tall. Annual.

Coconut A-Peel^® Thunbergia

A fun way to raise the white plants in your moon garden up to eye level is to grow a white flowering vine like Coconut A-Peel black-eyed Susan vine. This vigorous twining vine quickly scrambles up to the top of a 5-8’ trellis in a single season and is covered in bright white, daisy-like blossoms all summer. If you have a trellis or obelisk on your patio, try this tall, white flowering vine to enjoy in the evening light.

Part sun to sun. 5-8’ tall. Annual.

‘Firefly Diamond’ Achillea

Fireflies, or whatever you call the insects that light up the night, are a sure sign of warm summer weather. Firefly Diamond yarrow will also light up your summer garden. These plants differ from other yarrow due to their taller nature without compromising beautiful habits and sturdiness. Diamond features ivory white flowers that contrast beautifully with its dark green foliage. The habit is nicely upright, and the flowers remain attractive as they age.

Full Sun. 24-28” Tall.  Perennial in Zones 3-8.

‘Queen of Hearts’ Brunnera

This stunning foliage perennial will be the queen of the shade (and your heart). Compared to its companion plant ‘Jack of Diamonds’, ‘Queen of Hearts’ has more heart-shaped leaves and more pronounced silver overlay with narrower bands of dark green veining. From mid to late spring, baby blue, forget-me-not type blossoms are held in clusters above the foliage.

Part to Full Shade. 16-18” Tall. Perennial in Zones 3-8.

Color Coded^® ‘The Price is White’ Echinacea

Bright pink, red and orange coneflowers are popular varieties for perennial borders, but for your moon garden, try planting ‘The Price is White’. Its large 5” wide, bright white flowers and dark green foliage are a perfect fit for this type of design. The flowers open broad and flat, so they reflect the soft evening light beautifully. Look how they glow in this picture paired with ‘Firefly Diamond’ yarrow and Silver Bullet^® artemisia. Since it produces plenty of blooms from midsummer to fall, there will be extra for cutting for fresh bouquets, too.

Part sun to sun. 20-22” tall. Perennial in zones 4-8.

‘Chantilly Lace’ Aruncus

‘Chantilly Lace’ is a part shade-loving plant that produces beautiful sprays of lacy, cream-colored flowers in late spring to early summer. It is very floriferous when it’s in bloom, completely covering the deep green foliage. Goatsbeard is similar in appearance to Astilbe in the garden, but it is more drought tolerant. This lovely, graceful plant would be a great component in your moon garden.

Sun or Shade. 30-32: Tall. Perennial in Zones 3-7.

Magic Show^® ‘White Wands’ Veronica

Every moon garden needs a few magical elements like the white wand-shaped blooms of this pure white flowered variety of spike speedwell. It’s one of our favorite Proven Winners perennials because it has this picture perfect habit every summer, helped along by its strong disease resistance and long bloom time. Beginning in early summer, its flower wands start to open at the bottom, slowly unfurling its tiny blossoms upwards while growing longer in the process. That leaves lots of time for pollinators to feed and for you to enjoy the magic show.

Part sun to sun. 14-16” tall. Perennial in zones 4-8.

Amazing Daisies^® Daisy May^® Leucanthumum

This classic Shasta daisy truly is amazing. The deep green foliage shows off the pure white flowers to great effect. The dense branching and plentiful side buds leads to dozens of flowers – so many you almost can’t see foliage. The large flowers are snowy white and will often continue all summer long if you deadhead regularly. Bees and butterflies will thank you for including it in your garden.

Full Sun. 12-24” Tall. Hardy in Zones 5-9.

Luminary^™ ‘Backlight’ Phlox paniculata

If you’ll be viewing your moon garden from a distance, maybe out your kitchen window or from the patio, be sure to include a few taller white flowered plants that will be easy to see from there. ‘Backlight’ tall garden phlox is perfect for such a situation as it presents large clusters of sparkling white, fragrant blossoms atop a mass of dark green foliage. You’ll appreciate that it has strong resistance to powdery mildew and won’t need staking to stay perfectly upright, even when laden with those big blooms from midsummer to fall.

Part sun to sun. 28-30” tall. Perennial in zones 3-8.

Steady as She Goes^® Gardenia

Moon gardens are popular in southern climates where evening is the best time to enjoy the outdoors after the intense heat of the day has subsided. That’s when you will have time to stop and enjoy the sweet fragrance and abundant white blossoms of Steady as She Goes gardenia. This improved variety boasts strong heat tolerance yet also good cold hardiness for a gardenia. Best of all, it blooms continuously and won’t drop its flower buds in inclement weather all the way until frost. Its shorter height makes this variety a good candidate for planting up around the patio where its heady fragrance can be appreciated.

Part sun to sun. 3-5’ tall, spreading 4-7’ wide. Hardy in zones 7-10.

Illuminati Tower^™ Philadelphus

Mockorange is a delightfully old-fashioned plant that has unfortunately fallen out of favor, mostly due to its enormous size. Illuminati Tower^™ mockorange stands to breathe new life into this classic favorite, though, combining a landscape-friendly size with a totally unique space-saving habit. It naturally grows in a very narrow, upright way, each sturdy stem a stack of rugged, deep green leaves that looks like a four-sided tower. In late spring/early summer, hundreds of fragrant white flowers emerge from between the leaves for striking show that truly celebrates the season. Very fragrant white flowers bloom in late spring and early summer, wafting sweet fragrance that carries on the warm breezes.

Part Sun to Sun. 3-4’ Tall. Hardy in Zones 4-7.

Incrediball^® Hydrangea arborescens

Incrediball hydrangea will make you say WOW - it's an improved version of the garden classic 'Annabelle' hydrangea, but with strong, sturdy stems that don't flop over and extra-large blooms to boot. White flowers begin to appear in mid-summer and open to enormous snowballs, nearly the size of basketballs! They then age to a lush jade green, which persists through frost. It's a super easy, super reliable North American native that grows in chilly USDA zone 3 all the way up to USDA zone 8/9. Plant Incrediball hydrangea in your landscape and find out for yourself just how big, beautiful, and rewarding it can be.

Part Sun to Sun. 4-5’ Tall. Hardy in Zones 3-8.

Limelight Prime^® Hydrangea paniculata

Panicle hydrangeas are classic plants for moon gardens, as their prominent, cone-shaped blossoms brighten up the evening garden from midsummer into fall. You’ll love Limelight Prime for its strong, upright stems that carry huge, gorgeous panicles of flowers that open light green, brighten to white, and then slowly take on warm pink and red tones as the nights turn cooler. There will be plenty of extras if you’d like to clip a few for a fresh bouquet on your patio table. Everyone needs at least one of these easy to grow hydrangeas!

Part sun to sun. 4-6’ tall. Hardy in zones 3-8.

White Chiffon^® Hibiscus

The crisp white flowers of White Chiffon^® rose of Sharon make a cool, refreshing oasis in the landscape that is especially effective on summer nights, when they seem to shine out from the plant. Fluffy centers not only make the blooms extra showy, they also ensure this plant sets much less seed than conventional roses of Sharon as well. All of the Chiffon^® series naturally grows with a useful rounded habit and soft graceful stems. Butterflies and hummingbirds are attracted to them and deer tend not to find them tasty.

Pugster White^® Buddleia

Here’s an easy way to bring the butterflies right up to your patio! Dwarf butterfly bushes like Pugster White are perfect plants for bordering sunny seating areas since they don’t take up much space and draw pollinators in close for a fun summertime show. You’ll get to enjoy their fragrant flowers for months beginning in midsummer and lasting until fall. These drought tolerant, sun loving plants won’t mind the reflected heat from your paved patio and require little maintenance to thrive.

Full sun. 2’ tall, spreading 2-3’ wide. Hardy in zones 5-9.

Perfecto Mundo^® Double White Reblooming Azalea

Reblooming azaleas have become staples in southern gardens, and this is the very best we’ve found in our extensive trials. Its radiant white, double blossoms appear prolifically in spring, as is expected with azaleas, but it also boasts amazing rebloom from late summer into fall. Attractive dark green foliage provides a contrasting backdrop for the bright blooms which glow in the evening sun. A beautiful evergreen option for your moon garden!

Part sun to sun. 2.5’ tall, spreading 3-4’ wide. Hardy in zones 6b-9b.

Steady Eddy^® Viburnum

Viburnums make great landscape shrubs since they are so easy to grow and need very little maintenance to thrive. Most bloom once in the spring, but we’re recommending Steady Eddy doublefile viburnum for moon gardens because it is a strong repeat bloomer, continuing to flower throughout the summer months. If you leave enough space for it to grow to its natural size and shape without pruning, you’ll get to enjoy its elegantly layered branching structure that’s decorated with white lacecap blossoms for months.

Part sun to sun. 4-5’ tall and wide. Hardy in zones 5-8.

Reminiscent^™ Crema Rosa

Combining the classic beauty and fragrance of old-fashioned roses with the disease resistance and bloom performance that is expected of modern roses, Reminiscent Crema rose is absolutely a delight to grow. Each large, full blossom boasts a high petal count and smells just like you’d hope a rose this beautiful would. Standing up to 3’ tall, it is the perfect size for growing in the middle of a moon garden or around your patio where its creamy white blossoms will glow in the soft evening light. No deadheading is needed to keep the flowers coming all summer.

Full sun. 1.5-3’ tall. Hardy in zones 4-9.

Learn More:

Browse the Hydrangea Pinterest Board for More Ideas
Learn More about Using White in the Garden.
Explore this Idea Board Featuring Moon Garden Plants.