Calluna vulgaris is the plant that colors the Scottish highlands purple every August, and it carries that association with open, austere landscapes even when grown in a suburban garden bed. It is a tough, wiry evergreen ground cover, its stems clothed in tiny, scale-like gray-silver leaves that hold their color through winter. The pink flowers appear in late summer and persist into fall, long after summer perennials have faded, making it useful for the gap that many gardens struggle to fill. It stays low, rarely exceeding two feet, and spreads gradually to form dense, weed-suppressing mats.

The conditions it demands are precise: well-drained, acidic, lean soil in full sun. It is a plant of poor land, and rich, fertile soil will shorten its life. In the humid South it is genuinely difficult, susceptible to stem rot in hot, wet summers, but in the cooler, better-drained gardens of zones 4 through 6 it is reliable and long-lived. The essential maintenance is an annual spring shear, cutting back the previous year's flowered growth before new growth begins. Skip this step for a few years and the stems become bare and woody from the base, a condition difficult to correct. Prune early and prune faithfully, and heather will reward with decades of quiet service.