Tired of buying green onions at the grocery and having half of them turn slimy in the fridge? Growing chives, another hard-to-kill plant, is a great alternative. Just snip off the hollow green stems about an inch from the ground as needed and add to a dish at the end of cooking for a mild onion flavor. The purple flowers on a chives plant in the spring are a nice (and edible) bonus. Their cousin, garlic chives, has flat, grass-like leaves, white flowers and a mild garlic flavor.
These low-maintenance perennials can get pushy; planting chives in a contained spot will keep them from taking over.

Providing big impact with little care, red poppies are one of my favorite hard-to-kill plants. I find the most difficult thing about this perennial is to remember that it’s not a weed! Until the poppy flower blooms, this scraggly-leaved plant looks like something you’d want to pull out of the garden.
When planting, dig deep to loosen the soil; a poppy plant develops a long root like a carrot. And while you’re digging, think about what you might like to plant in front of your Oriental poppies. Once their brief May-June blooming period has ended, the foliage goes dormant and leaves you with nothing but memories of poppy flowers until next spring.

The squirrels eat my tulip bulbs, my hyacinths topple over and the crocuses stick around as long as cotton candy on a rainy day … but daffodils last and last. Also called narcissus, these spring-flowering bulbs require little care, but do like to face the sun. When you plant them in the fall, avoid soggy or shady spots. After they bloom in the spring, allow the leaves to remain until completely withered.

In addition to the familiar yellow flowers, there are white and bi-color varieties with orange or pink accents, not to mention miniature and even fragrant types. Note that daffodil bulbs require cold winter temperatures as part of their development and don’t do well in frost-free areas.