If you’re just starting a regenerative garden, or transitioning your current garden to one that is more sustainable, you might be looking for plants to add into your eco friendly landscape.
Here we’ve gathered our top 54 plants for regenerative gardening that offer benefit to your soil, the ecosystem, and will provide you with an abundant harvest.
Most of these plants we have in our own regenerative gardens, and so we’ll offer advice on specific varieties that we enjoy the best.
The majority of the plants listed are available at plantingjustice.org, but check your local nurseries for similar plants to add to your landscape.
Regenerative gardening practices are based on the principles of regenerative agriculture, which follows these guidelines:
While many gardeners may grow mostly annual plants, perennials are usually better for the environment and offer a great opportunity for adding regenerative benefits in your garden. They offer more nourishment to the soil and surrounding area, and also are able to sequester more carbon than annual plants.
While we always recommend growing varieties of fruit that will thrive in your growing zone and match the native species in your area, here in our zone 7 garden we really love:
1. Fig, especially the Chicago Hardy and Olympian varieties. Figs are known for being both drought-tolerant and flood resistant, making them a perfect choice for building resilience into your regenerative landscape (Smrekar).
2. Mulberries, especially Pakistan and Illinois Everbearing. Mulberry leaves and branches are a favorite snack for goats, and have a good amount of protein to offer them. Mulberry trees are known for their carbon storage potential (8billion) , making them a must-have for your sustainable garden landscape.
3. Plum, especially Italian Plum and Brooks Plum.
If you're looking to stabilize soil on a slope, you might want to try planting a grove of American Plum on the slope, as they are known to help prevent erosion. Bounty plum is an excellent cold hardy tree that can be productive down to zone 3. If you have extra rainy springs and/or mild winters, Methley might be a great option for you with its low chill hour requirement and hardy blooms.
4. Apple, especially Northern Spy. North Pole is great for small spaces, and Wolf River is great if you have some room to spare and want some giant apples. According to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, apple trees offer many benefits to the local ecosystem, including offering food for pollinators, shelter for birds and small mammals, and Ontario Apple Growers mention that apple trees support soil stabilization and can absorb excess water.
5. Pear, especially the fire-blight resistant Asian Pear and Moonglow. Golden Spice or Ure European are best for cold climates and can be hardy down to zone 3 or 2, respectively. For longer-term fresh storage, try the Summer Crisp European Pear.
6. Hawthorne, if not for fruit then for the medicinal value, copicing potential, ecological benefit, and hedgerow quality. Look for varieties of Hawthorne that are native to your area. As a more wild fruit, hawthornes do not need fertilizer input.
7. Elderberry, for medicinal value, copicing potential, and gorgeous flowers. Be sure to get the Sambucus nigra variety for making medicine, and cook the fruit before eating. Samdal is great for copicing and hedgerow building as well as for medicinal value. Most often, elderberries do not need fertilizer in order to thrive.
8. Sea berries or Sea Buckthorn, for medicinal value, hedgerow potential, and nitrogen fixing abilities. Most varieties are noted to be hardy to -40 F, which is impressive. Once established, sea berries are very drought tolerant and need little input. Seaberries come in "male" and "female" varieties, and you will need at least 1 male for a group of female plants to produce fruit.
The Caprice variety is fantastic, and the Mary and Harvest Moon varieties have less thorns if that's your preference (I really like plants with thorns though so I stick with the thorn-abundant varieties).
Look at what berries grow natively in your area for a good idea of what will thrive in your own garden.
Almost nothing is better than going outside to munch on a few handfuls of berries fresh from the plant! Foraging for breakfast is pretty satisfying.
9. Blackberries, especially any varieties that are indigenous to your area. Blackberries offer fantastic food for both bees and butterflies, both of which we often seen fluttering around our plants in late spring/early summer when the blooms are abundant.
If you get a thorned variety, it can double as a hedgerow or living fence. Blackberries are drought resistant and once established don't need much, if any, water to thrive. Blackberries are great for partially shaded areas or on the edge of a tree line. They will easily propagate and are a breeze to freeze and enjoy throughout the year.
10. Strawberries, with Seascape being our favorite around here. Strawberries are great because they will multiply by runners, meaning that year after year you can expand your strawberry crop throughout your landscape. They provide excellent ground cover and soil stabilization for your regenerative garden.
11. Gooseberry, for their taste and also their persistence. Once established, these can get totally mowed down by critters (ie goats) and then reemerge the following year. This makes them easy to propagate as well, I prefer the stool layering method for gooseberry.
While they may take time to become established, being able to grow your own source of fat and protein holds such a high value when leaning towards self-sufficiency in your garden. Plus, nuts have a great ability for long-term storage with little effort on your part.
12. Hazelnuts or Filberts. Hazel is also a great coppicing tree with flexible branches that does well in marginal soil. Jefferson Hazelnut and Yamhill are heavy bearing and disease resistant, while Purple Fortin is just plain gorgeous.
13. Chestnuts, even though they aren’t as high in protein as true nuts, they are delicious. In addition to being a source of food, they also are known for enhancing soil health and have a large carbon storage potential due to their size and lifespan. They are relatively low-input and do not require a lot of water to thrive. Colossal Chestnuts and Layeroka are both disease-resistant, cold hardy, and early bearing. If you have hot summers, you might want to try Marrisard.
14. Butternut, especially if you’re in its indigenous area in Eastern US. There does not seem to be specific varieties of this tree, and they can be purchased at Planting Justice.
Perennial herbs have so many functions in a garden! They add beauty, attract beneficial insets and pollinators, can be edible or medicinal, and often serve as great companion plants.
Here are my favorite perennial herbs that I grow in my garden:
15. Chives will multiply in your garden, and provide gorgeous pink-purple globous flower heads in their second year onwards that make for a tasty addition to salads. The garlic flavor of chives will brighten up any dish, and best of all they require no digging to harvest unlike most other alliums.
16. Mint, any variety, although I really enjoy apple mint for tea. While I enjoy its vigorous spreading quality, you may not, so plant in a pot if that may be an issue. There are many varieties of mints with different flavor profiles, such as ginger mint, chocolate mint, and basil mint.
17. Oregano to dry for seasoning to use on meals throughout the year. Oregano offers great blooms for pollinators and attracts beneficial insects.
18. Lemon balm, for teas and for it’s pest-repelling scent
19. Nettles, for teas and building soil, as nettles is traditionally used in compost teas.
20. Motherwort, for adding height and dimension to the garden, offering gorgeous interesting spikes of flowers for pollinators, and for making delicious tea for me!
21. Rosemary, for its pest-repelling scent, medicinal value, and for drying to use as a spice in cooking.
22. Goldenrod is a beautiful herb that offers blooms later in the year for pollinators. Goldenrod is a C4 photosynthesizer (Kevin Songer) in addition to being a perennial plant, making it a great choice for regenerative landscapes.
23. Artemesias, such as mugwort, sagebrush, and French tarragon, add interest to the garden with their height and blooms. Like goldenrod, they are also C4 photosynthesizers (Kevin Songer) and can be harvested for an herbal tea or tincture.
To plant a vegetable once and get harvests off of it year after year is such a treat, especially in the annual-dominated vegetable sector.
Here are some that I grow in my own garden:
24. Asparagus, which offers such a delicious harvest early on in the season. We have had luck with starting Mary Washington Asparagus from seed with cold stratification.
25. Artichoke, not only for its delicious edible qualities, but also for its huge stunning flowers that become a hub for all pollinators. I enjoy the Globe and Purple varieties.
26. Jerusalem Artichoke, for its gorgeous sunflower bloom that comes right before the harvest of savory tubers. Harvest these after frost and roast them for a long time to help prevent gassy side effects.
27. Perennial Greens, such as tree collard and tree kale. These add amazing height, dimension, and interest to the garden, and can be easily propagated by cuttings to spread around your garden. We like Purple Tree Collard for its color and slug resistance, and Michigan Tree Collard for its Cold-hardiness. But there’s a surprisingly large variety out there!
28. Scarlet Emperor Runner Bean, which is perennial in zones 8 and above, but you might be able to mulch it heavily enough to get it to come back for a second year. While it’s a short lived perennial, the stunning red flowers and tasty beans make this one of my favorite plants to grow and admire in the garden. It's a favorite for the bees too!
29. Wine Cap Mushrooms, though technically not a plant, offer tasty and savory harvests that are easily propagated in wood chips or organic straw.
30. Egyptian Walking Onions and/or Bunching Onions, for onions that easily multiply themselves with little effort on your part. The greens of the onions are also edible. While these onions are smaller than your regular annual onion, their ability to come back year after year makes them worth it.
31. Bamboo, when planted with care and intention, can offer so much to a regenerative gardener: a privacy screen a source of wood, a vegetable, and a source of fodder. What really sets bamboo apart is that it can sequester 5x the amount of carbon than if the same area was planted in trees (8billion).
Soil building plants are an essential component of the regenerative garden. Some classics include:
32. Comfrey, a perennial dynamic accumulator plant that can be made into a fertilizer for your plants, offer mulch, or boost your compost pile. If you’re worried about the spreading nature of comfrey, try the Blocking 14 variety, which is sterile but can be spread by manually taking root divisions.
33. Fava beans and legumes, while not perennial, offer great green manure and nitrogen fixing capabilities alongside a tasty harvest. Fava beans come in a variety of colors - from Frog Nation Purple to Black to the swirls of Ur Kupina or Karmazyn Pink. Sweet Lorane is the best variety for overwintering in my experience.
34. Honey locust or Black locust, for its nitrogen enhancing qualities, value as lumber, and livestock fodder.
35. Cover crops, while a more general category, is a fantastic way to support the planet and build soil health. We love daikon for improving clay soil and offering tons of organic matter, and Austrian peas for their nitrogen fixing capabilities. You can learn more about the benefits of cover crops here - they are a must for any regenerative garden!
36. Autumn Olive is a fruiting small tree that we just planted in our garden, based on the good recommendation of this video from Burnt Ridge Farm. The fruit isn’t actually an olive, but is a berry. Autumn Olive can be invasive, so plant with caution and make sure it’s not banned in your area. They are great for building soil stability and fixing nitrogen, as mentioned in this video.
Beneficial insects help to reduce pest populations and also provide the ecological service of pollination for your fruiting plants. Some insect favorites include:
37. Borage has a wonderful amount of nectar for bees and other pollinators, and as a relative of comfrey, it offers a lot of biomass to help enhance soil health.
38. Native Milkweed offers food to butterflies and adds beauty to the garden. Be sure to research that the variety you are planting is native to your area, as non-native milkweeds can confuse monarchs as to where they are in their migration journey.
39. Oceanspray/Cream Bush is a perennial plant with gorgeous white blossoms that attract butterflies.
40. Dandelion, while most often seen as a gardener’s enemy, offers food to pollinators early in the season. Their thick and deep taproot helps to improve the health of the soil, and their C4 photosynthesis method gives them more carbon storage potential (Kevin Songer).
While we’ve leaned heavily on perennial plants in this article, annual plants are still a large component of our own garden. These offer benefits that fit my own personal tastes and needs.
41. Chamomile makes for an amazing tea that can be easily harvested and dried. I also notice that chamomile planted near brassicas and salad greens helps to reduce pest damage, but your mileage may vary with that. We like the German variety.
42. Turnips are fast-growing decent-calorie containing root vegetables that taste excellent when roasted until golden and slightly crispy. We prefer the taste of White Egg and Golden, as they are sweeter than the more widely available Purple Top.
43. Beets similar to turnips, beets are fast growing and excellent roasted. The golden varieties are my favorites for their sweet taste
44. Potatoes are a generally low-maintenence and nourishing crop that provides a harvest that can be easily preserved, and inherently provides “seeds” for next year’s planting. Try some purple or blue varieties for extra antioxidants and interest.
45. Calendula is an easy to grow plant that offers pops of color throughout the garden, and if you let a couple of plants go to seed, they will come back in place the following year. I harvest the flower heads to dry and make tea.
46. Corn is an interesting plant. It might not grow well in every climate and does need some decent soil and water input to thrive. However, it can be used for making flour, eaten fresh, and supplement the diet of backyard chickens. Corn offers a lot of biomass with their stalk, and they are known to store a high amount of carbon in the soil for an annual plant (permies).
47. Brassicas, such as cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflowers store more carbon when compared with most other annuals due to their C4 photosynthesis process (Kevin Songer). These plants can also produce a decent amount of biomass after harvest. For best results in your regenerative garden, be sure to leave the roots in the ground when the season is complete.
48. Amaranth is a drought-tolerant and protein rich grain that does well even when grown on marginal lands. We have had great success with Burgundy, even with hardly watering it in our mostly rain-free summers. Definitely something to try to provide grain and protein to your diet.
49. Sunflowers offer food for humans and pollinators, in addition to nourishing the soil. Their large size provides a great amount of biomass and carbon-storing potential. Russian Giant and Mammoth offer seeds along with stunning blooms. We have a full guide to growing sunflowers from seed that you can check out for more information.
50. Sorghum is a C4 photosynthesizer, offering more carbon storage than more other vegetable crops, which is amplified by its long roots. The long roots help make this plant drought-tolerant, and it is heat tolerant as well. There are varieties of sorghum that are best suited for grain, and other varieties that are best suited for sugar syrup.
51. Marigolds make energy with C4 photosynthesis and are a scientifically studied companion plant for tomatoes and other vegetables.
52. Zinnias are another C4 plant that come in many different colors to add visual interest to your regenerative garden.
53. Chrysanthemums are - you guessed it - a C4 photosynthesizer. They also attract pollinators and deter garden pests and even mosquitoes (greatist).
54. Heleniums are perennial flowers that also are in the C4 family, and add color to your garden late in the season (Portland Nursery).
-(C4 plants found via Kevin Songer)
All 54 of these plants allow for easy implementation of regenerative gardening principles, as they prioritize self sufficiency, being multi-purpose, and practical. Perennial plants especially allow for us to work with nature, and create productive and resilient gardens.
I highly recommend incorporating some of these perennial vegetables, trees, herbs, soil-building plants, pollinator plants, and classic annual plants to enhance your regenerative garden.
Learn the basics of regenerative agriculture here, or follow our step by step guide to transition your current garden into a regenerative garden.
