What dedicated gardener hasn’t leafed through a garden catalog looking for something new and unusual to add to their plant repertoire? This year, find a special spot in the garden and try your green thumbs at one of these unusual plants. They will add color, texture, and a pot of ingenuity to your garden planting concept for this spring. Here are the top 10 plants to grow this 2021.

10. Green Zebra Tomato from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

This colorful and unusual tomato will add pizazz to both your garden and to salads. California foodie Alice Waters chose this beauty for her restaurant Chez Panisse. The large tomatoes ripen with a zebra-like stripe pattern that alternates yellow gold and dark green. The emerald flesh has a lovely flavor, and also looks beautiful sliced on a platter.

9. Winter Thriller Mix from Wayside Gardens

Don’t wait on this one! Order before they sell out, and so that you can get them planted in time for a colorful spring display. The Winter Thriller Mix Lenten Rose delivers flowers of Lime, Violet, White, Red, and Buttery Yellowin this sophisticated mix. Each plant produces just one of these colors, so order multiple plants because the more you order, the greater your color variety will be.

8. Purple Vienna Kohlrabi from Vesseys

This is a very hardy and uniquely unusual vegetable and plants to grow this year. The flat, globe-shaped bulbs have a reddish purple skin and white flesh. You can also grow and harvest this plant as a microgreen, because the Purple Vienna is tender with dark purple veins, and lovely in a variety of dishes.

7. Patty Pan Squash at Park Seed

For patty pan squash lovers, five varieties in this delightful mix provide squash that vary from ghostly white to glowing yellow to dark green — with striped and speckled types thrown in! These are easy to grow and ready to harvest in a short time, so this mix will be a power producer in your summer garden! These squash are unusual colors and a super fun shape.

6. SunSparkler® Dazzleberry Stonecrop from Jackson & Perkins

This ground cover has an unusual shade of blue with smoky overtones and makes a dramatic statement from afar and up close. Resistant to summer heat and humidity, SunSparkler Dazzleberry Stonecrop plants are beautiful during the summer, and when the raspberry red flower heads appear late and last for seven weeks or more.

5. Lapins Sweet Cherry at Stark Bros.

Try your green thumb with fruit trees, like the Lapins Sweet Cherry. This lovely tree comes in a variety of sizes, and is new at Stark Bros. It produces a Bing-type cherry, with deliciously dark, lushly fleshy, reddish-black fruit. This is on of the best plants to grow this 2021.

4. Orange Peter Pepper from Pepper Joe’s

Are all peppers RED? Not a chance. This awesome, unusually colored pepper is sweeter but still has some great pepper heat. The Orange Peter Pepper will light up your garden and your culinary creations.

3. Biennis Alba at Stokes Seeds

Silver dollars are beautiful and surprisingly easy to grow. You will have to have patience as the silver seed pod pouches do not appear until second year, but you will love the way this unusual plant looks in your landscaping, and find that it works in a variety of dry arrangements. Elegant and ethereal, add this to your gardening bag of tricks.

2. Fritillaria Rubra from Tulips.com

It’s not too early to start thinking about the bulbs you want to plant this coming fall, either. Even though many are “sold out” now, when they come back into stock, you can be the first to snatch them up, like this stunning Fritillaria Rubra, which is a specialty bulb that has a dramatic flower and unique foliage. Check this unique plants to grow this 2021.

1. Double Click Cranberries at KitchenGardenSeeds

Browse the selection in your seed catalog’s “new varieties” category. Our inner gardener fell in love with this dramatic double bloom cosmos, Double Click Cranberries. The color is magnificent, the plant is easy to grow, and it’s a favorite of bees and flower arrangers.

by Catalogs.com Info Guru Samantha Rose