10 Great Plants for Hospital Landscaping Beds

Imagine you’re a patient in a hospital room, and your only connection to the outside is what you see out your window. A vibrant green space can make your day.

Think about the stress that health care pros endure on the job. A front entrance featuring colorful flowers and thriving plants starts a stress-filled day with calm and beauty.

Great hospital landscape design adds to the healing.

What are some great plants for hospital landscaping? Here’s a look.

1. Ornamental Grasses

These popular plants offer appealing color and texture. Graceful ornamental grasses wave in the breeze and help draw attention to signage, making these elegant plants suitable for hospitals.

2. Heuchera (Coral Bells)

The big bonus with coral bells is the fantastic foliage that rivals flowers with its interest and beauty. There are lots of varieties to choose from, with ruffled leaves in greens, purples, golds, and corals.

3. Coneflower

Part of the fun of this long-blooming native flower are the great names, like ’PowWow Wild Berry’, and ‘Kim’s Knee High.’ Butterflies and hummingbirds will start flitting around, too, delighting the patients and hospital workers who duck outside for some respite — a bonus that makes them great plants for hospitals. Once established, they’re drought tolerant.

4. Assorted Annuals

Annuals offer a burst of dependable color perfect for brightening hospital landscape design.

Howard University Hospital has 2,000 annuals on its Washington DC property, brightening the hospital grounds spring through fall with bursts of vibrant red and purple.

Great annuals to include: vinca, petunias, lantana, dragon wing begonia, creeping Jenny, coleus and sweet potato vine.

5. Virginia Sweetspire ‘Little Henry’

This compact native shrub starts out the summer with a beautiful blanket of fragrant white flowers. In autumn, its foliage turns a stunning garnet-red, especially in full sun.

6. Winterberry Holly

Hospital landscape design needs winter interest, too. A profusion of bright red berries brightens the winter landscape and provides food for hungry birds. Note that a male pollenizer, such as Jim Dandy Holly, is needed in order to produce berries.

7. Fothergilla major 'Mount Airy'

This pretty native shrub offers deep blue-green leaves, fragrant white spring flowers and attractive fall color. Bonus: Honey-scented, brush-like flowers appear before the leaves.

8. Korean Spice Viburnum

This lovely spring shrub is one of the earliest viburnums to bloom, with white or pink-flushed flowers in domed clusters. You’ll smell its real appeal as soon as you inhale. Sniff — they smell like spice cake. Plant this intoxicating shrub where your hospital visitors and staff can really enjoy it — near your entrance, along a path or in a common area with seating. It’s a great, mood-boosting addition to your hospital landscape design.

9. Catmint

A can’t-miss perennial, catmint, also known as nepeta, is tough, drought tolerant, low maintenance, and blooms with deep lavender blooms all summer long, making it a great plant for hospital landscaping. It also attracts butterflies and is deer resistant.

10. Spring Bulbs

Nothing celebrates spring like bursts of bright tulips and daffodils. Add instant cheer to your hospital landscape design when these beauties burst into bloom.

Pick your favorites, or let the bulb-loving pros at Level Green fill your hospital landscape design with their tried-and-true faves:

• Purdy’ is a vibrant mix of red, yellow, and purple tulips that we order by the thousands.
• ‘Vitamin See’ is A cheerful mix of lemon yellow, pumpkin orange, and purple tulips.
• Or think pink with ‘Best Pink’ — magnificent, vivid pink tulips on stout stems, great for borders and mass plantings.

Daffodils add instant cheer to hospital landscape design:

• Carlton’ offers two-toned yellow blooms an impressive five inches across. Sniff, and you’re rewarded with a vanilla fragrance.
• ’Actaea’ has won multiple awards over the last 100 years. Unlike most daffodils, it does well in shaded areas of your hospital landscape design.
• ‘Ice Follies’ will remind you of a sunny side up egg, with shallow yellow cups and crisp white petals.

Trust Your Hospital Landscape Design to Level Green

Everybody involved in a hospital setting needs peace of mind — from the nervous patients who check in to the property managers who have a lot more to deal with than landscaping.

Great hospital landscape design is part of the important healing care.

If you’re not already a Level Green Landscaping client, we’d love to add you to our growing list of happy customers. Our focus is on commercial properties like hospitals, offices, mixed-use sites, HOAs, municipalities and institutions in Maryland, Washington DC and parts of Virginia.

Contact us today at 202-544-0968 or by filling out our form online to see how we can transform your commercial landscape. You can also schedule a free consultation with one of our team members.

We’d love to hear from you.

Image Source: ornamental grass, coneflower, Virginia sweetspire, mount airy, catmint