Ornamental plants are grown for their aesthetic features, for their flowers, leaves, scent or overall appearance. Having ornamental plants in the garden contributes to the view of your home, gives you the joy of gardening and the apprecitation of your guests. In the list below you will find some of the most astonishing woody plants to grow with their description. Choose well and enjoy!
Cornus has simple, untoothed leaves with the veins curving distinctively as they approach the leaf margins. Most dogwood species have 
opposite leaves, while a few, such as Cornus alternifolia and controversa, have their leaves alternate. Dogwood flowers have four parts. In many species, the flowers are borne separately in open (but often dense) clusters, while in various other species (such as the flowering dogwood), the flowers themselves are tightly clustered, lacking showy petals, but surrounded by four to six large, typically white petal-like bracts. The drupes of species in the subgenera Cornus are edible. Many are without much flavor. Cornus kousa and Cornus mas are sold commercially as edible fruit trees. The fruits of Cornus kousa have a sweet, tropical pudding like flavor in addition to hard pits. The fruits of Cornus mas are both tart and sweet when completely ripe. They have been eaten in Eastern Europe for centuries, both as food and medicine to fight colds and flus. They are very high in vitamin C. However, those of species in subgenus Swida are mildly toxic to people, though readily eaten by birds.
Solidago (commonly called goldenrods) species are perennials growing from woody caudices or rhizomes. Their stems ranges from decumbent (crawling) to ascending or erect, with a range of heights going from 5 cm (2.0 in) to over a meter. Most species are unbranched, but some do display branching in the upper part of the plant. Both leaves and stems vary from glabrous (hairless) to various forms of pubescence (strigose, strigillose, hispid, stipitate-glandular or villous). In some species, the basal leaves are shed before flowering. The leaf margins are most commonly entire, but often display heavier serration. Some leaves may display trinerved venation rather than the pinnate venation usual across Asteraceae. The flower heads are usually of the radiate type (typical daisy flower heads with distinct ray and disc florets) but sometimes discoid (with only disc florets of mixed, sterile, male and bisexual types). Heads usually include between 2 and 35 disc florets, but in some species this may go up to 60. Numerous heads are usually grouped in complex compound inflorescences where heads are arranged in multiple racemes, panicles, corymbs, or secund arrays (with florets all on the same side).
Cryptomeria is a very large evergreen tree, reaching up to 70 m (230 ft) tall and 4 m (13 ft) trunk diameter, with red-brown bark which peels in vertical strips. The leaves are arranged spirally, needle-like, 0.5–1 cm long; and the seed cones globular, 1–2 cm diameter with about 20–40 scales. It is superficially similar to the related giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum), from which it can be differentiated by the longer leaves (under 0.5 cm or 1⁄4 in in the giant sequoia) and smaller cones (4–6 cm in the giant sequoia), and the harder bark on the trunk (thick, soft and spongy in giant sequoia).
Chamaerops is a genus of flowering plants in the palm family Arecaceae. The only currently fully accepted species is Chamaerops humilis, variously called European fan palm or the Mediterranean dwarf palm. It is one of the most cold-hardy palms and is used in landscaping in temperate climates. The stems grow slowly and often tightly together, eventually reaching 2–5 m (10–20 ft) tall with a trunk diameter of 20–25 cm (8–10 in). It is a fan palm (Arecaceae tribe Corypheae), and as such, has leaves with petioles terminating in rounded fans of 10–20 leaflets. Each leaf is up to 1.5 m (5 ft) long, with leaflets 50–80 cm (20–30 in) long. The petioles are armed with numerous sharp, needle-like spines; these may protect the stem growing point from browsing animals. The flowers are borne in dense, short inflorescences at the tops of the stems. The plants usually, but not invariably, are dioecious with male and female flowers on separate plants. The prophyll covers the flowers on the inflorescence until the sexual phase (anthesis) and then splits open apically into two triangular lobes.
Spiraea, sometimes spelled spirea in common names, is a genus of about 80 to 100 species of shrubs in the family Rosaceae. Spiraea plants are hardy, deciduous-leaved shrubs. The leaves are simple and usually short stalked, and are arranged in a spiralling, alternate fashion. In most species, the leaves are lanceolate (narrowly oval) and about 2.5 to 10 centimetres (0.98 to 3.94 in) long. The leaf margins are usually toothed, occasionally cut or lobed, and rarely smooth. Stipules are absent. The many small flowers of Spiraea shrubs are clustered together in inflorescences, usually in dense panicles, umbrella-like corymbs, or grape-like clusters. The radial symmetry of each flower is five fold, with the flowers usually bisexual, rarely unisexual. The flowers have five sepals and five white, pink, or reddish petals that are usually longer than the sepals. Each flower has many (15 to 60) stamens. The fruit is an aggregate of follicles.
Hamamelis virginiana, known as common or American witch-hazel, is a species of witch-hazel native to eastern North America, from Nova Scotia west to Minnesota, and south to central Florida to eastern Texas. It is a small, deciduous tree growing up to 6 m (rarely to 10 m) tall, often with a dense cluster of stems from its base. The bark is light brown, smooth, scaly, inner bark reddish purple. The branchlets are pubescent at first, later smooth, light orange brown, marked with occasional white dots, finally dark or reddish brown. The foliage buds are acute, slightly falcate, downy, light brown. The leaves are oval, 3.7–16.7 cm long and 2.5–13 cm broad, oblique at the base, acute or rounded at the apex, with a wavy-toothed or shallowly lobed margin, and a short, stout petiole 6–15 mm long; the midrib is more or less hairy, stout, with six to seven pairs of primary veins. The young leaves open involute, covered with stellate rusty down; when full grown, they are dark green above, and paler beneath. In fall, they turn yellow with rusty spots. The leaf stipules are lanceolate, acute; they fall soon after the leaf expands.
Amelanchier, also known as shadbush, shadwood or shadblow, serviceberry or sarvisberry, or just sarvis, juneberry, saskatoon, sugarplum or wild-plum, and chuckley pear. The various species of Amelanchier grow to 0.2–20 m tall; some are small trees, some are multistemmed, clump-forming shrubs, and yet others form extensive low shrubby patches (clones). The bark is gray or less often brown, and in tree species smooth or fissuring when older. The leaves are deciduous, cauline, alternate, simple, lanceolate to elliptic to orbiculate, 0.5–10 x 0.5–5.5 cm, thin to coriaceous, with surfaces above glabrous or densely tomentose at flowering, and glabrous or more or less hairy beneath at maturity. The inflorescences are terminal, with 1–20 flowers, erect or drooping, either in clusters of one to four flowers, or in racemes with 4–20 flowers. The flowers have five white (rarely somewhat pink, yellow, or streaked with red), linear to orbiculate petals, 2.6–25 mm long, with the petals in one species (A. nantucketensis) often andropetalous (bearing apical microsporangia adaxially).
Hedera, commonly called ivy (plural ivies), is a genus of 12–15 species of evergreen climbing or ground-creeping woody plants in the family Araliaceae, native to western, central and southern Europe, Macaronesia, northwestern Africa and across central-southern Asia east to Japan and Taiwan. On level ground they remain creeping, not exceeding 5–20 cm height, but on suitable surfaces for climbing, including trees, natural rock outcrops or man-made structures such as quarry rock faces or built masonry and wooden structures, they can climb to at least 30 m above the ground. Ivies have two leaf types, with palmately lobed juvenile leaves on creeping and climbing stems and unlobed cordate adult leaves on fertile flowering stems exposed to full sun, usually high in the crowns of trees or the tops of rock faces, from 2 m or more above ground. The juvenile and adult shoots also differ, the former being slender, flexible and scrambling or climbing with small aerial roots to affix the shoot to the substrate (rock or tree bark), the latter thicker, self-supporting and without roots. The flowers are greenish-yellow with five small petals; they are produced in umbels in autumn to early winter and are very rich in nectar. The fruit is a greenish-black, dark purple or (rarely) yellow berry 5–10 mm diameter with one to five seeds, ripening in late winter to mid-spring. The seeds are dispersed by birds which eat the berries.
Buddleja, or Buddleia, commonly known as the butterfly bush, is a genus comprising over 140 species of flowering plants endemic to Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Of the approximately 100 species nearly all are shrubs <5 m (16 ft) tall, but a few qualify as trees, the largest reaching 30 m (98 ft). Both evergreen and deciduous species occur, in tropical and temperate regions resp. The leaves are lanceolate in most species, and arranged in opposite pairs on the stems (alternate in one species, B. alternifolia); they range from 1–30 cm (0.39–11.81 in) long. The flowers of the Asiatic species are mostly produced in terminal panicles 10–50 cm (3.9–19.7 in) long; the American species more commonly as cymes forming small, globose heads. Each individual flower is tubular and divided into four spreading lobes (petals) about 3–4 mm (0.12–0.16 in) across, the corolla length ranging from around 10 mm in the Asiatics to 3–30 mm in the American species, the wider variation in the latter because some South American species have evolved long red flowers to attract hummingbirds, rather than insects, as exclusive pollinators. The colour of the flowers varies widely, from mostly pastel pinks and blues in Asia, to vibrant yellows and reds in the New World, while many cultivars have deeper tones. The flowers are generally rich in nectar and often strongly honey-scented. The fruit is a small capsule about 1 cm (0.39 in) long and 1–2 mm (0.039–0.079 in) diameter, containing numerous small seeds; in a few species (previously classified in this separate genus Nicodemia) the capsule is soft and fleshy, forming a berry.
Phlox is a genus of 67 species of perennial and annual plants in the family Polemoniaceae. They are found mostly in North America (one in Siberia) in diverse habitats from alpine tundra to open woodland and prairie. Some flower in spring, others in summer and fall. Flowers may be pale blue, violet, pink, bright red, or white. Many are fragrant. It attracts hummingbirds and butterflies. Some species such as P. paniculata (garden phlox) grow upright, while others such as P. subulata (moss phlox, moss pink, mountain phlox) grow short and matlike. Paniculata or tall phlox, is a native American wildflower that is native from New York to Iowa south to Georgia, Mississippi and Arkansas. It blooms from July to September. Creeping phlox spreads rapidly and makes great ground cover. It can be planted to cover banks, fill spaces under tall trees, and spill and trail over slopes. Creeping phlox blooms in spring and produces long, spreading stems, which become woody with age. Phlox species are also a popular food source for groundhogs, rabbits and deer.
