8 Best Mid-Century Modern Landscaping Plants – for a Cohesive Contemporary Aesthetic That’s Effortlessly Cool

A mid-century modern home has a way of making landscaping look easy when it’s done right. The flat rooflines, strong horizontals, big windows can complement a well-designed landscape beautifully. But it can also create a mishmash that fights the design of your home, if you pick the wrong plants.

Good mid-century modern landscaping works with the clean lines of the architecture instead. It’s restrained, graphic, and plants are chosen for their silhouette as much as for blooms. The selections that tend to work well in contemporary gardens share a few qualities: clean form, year-round presence, and tough plants that stay sharp without much intervention.

The 8 mid-century landscaping ideas below span a range of zones and conditions, so there’s something for every MCM home regardless of climate or site. No matter where you live, you can create a cohesive contemporary aesthetic that enhances the beauty of both your home and landscape.

Mid-Century Modern Plants

These aren’t the only plants that work with a mid-century modern aesthetic, but they’re the ones that often appear in beautifully designed MCM landscapes. Structure is what earns them a spot first and foremost – color is just a bonus.

1. Japanese Maple

Japanese maples pull a lot of quiet weight in mid-century landscaping. Their branching is layered and architectural – even without a leaf on the trees – and fall foliage color runs from deep burgundy to fiery orange, depending on the variety.

This tree is tough to beat, honestly. Weeping or upright both work wonderfully. The choice mostly comes down to how much room you have. If you have a small landscape, you can even grow Japanese maples in pots.

Partial shade is fine, which makes them particularly useful on the north or east side of a house where most sun-lovers struggle. Consistent moisture and a good mulch layer through the first season are about all Japanese maples need – after that they mostly take care of themselves.

Explore an array of wow-worthy Japanese maples from Fast Growing Trees.

2. Feather Reed Grass

Feather reed grass is about as close to mid-century geometry as a perennial can get. It's tall, arrow-straight, and not inclined to flopping. This low-maintenance ornamental grass emerges upright in spring and holds that posture clear through winter, which is more than most other grasses can manage.

Plant feather reed grass in full sun and average soil. Heavy clay and dry spells don’t really faze it, once it’s had a season to settle in.

Mass plants in a border strip or repeat by planting along a fence line. Either way, the repetition is what makes this grass work in a contemporary landscape. Cut it back hard in late winter and it returns looking sharp, season after season.

'Karl Foerster' is a popular cultivar of feather reed grass that you can get from Nature Hills Nursery or Home Depot online.

3. Agave

Drop an agave rosette in a bed of decomposed granite and these mid-century modern plants basically take care of themselves. The geometry is almost too good. Their form stays sharp year-round and some species go weeks without water.

Hardiness varies a lot by species, though, so it’s important to read the tag before buying. Cold-hardy types of agave plants push into zone 5, but others need zone 9 or warmer.

Full sun and fast drainage aren’t optional with agave. Working a gritty cactus and succulent potting mix from Amazon into the planting hole sorts out drainage from the start, which is vitally important for these desert-dwelling plants.

A Century plant (A. Americana) from Fast Growing Trees looks sharp in a pot or planted in-ground, if you live in a warmer climate.

4. Muhly Grass

Come September, muhly grass turns into a cloud of pink-purple haze that stops people mid-stride. That’s the moment it’s there for. That delicate, hazy texture sits well next to harder materials – concrete, steel edging, board-formed walls – which are common in mid-century modern design.

The other ten months, muhly grass is a tidy mound of fine green texture, quiet and undemanding. Heat and drought don’t bother it and neither does sandy or rocky soil. A little neglect suits this ornamental grass just fine.

Get a 3-pack of pink muhly grass plants from Home Depot.

5. Bird of Paradise

In warm climates, bird of paradise is one of the defining mid-century landscaping plants. Those paddle-shaped gray-green leaves and bold orange blooms turn up in practically every California and Arizona mid-century restoration – and the reason isn’t hard to figure out. The form holds year-round, and really all it needs, once it’s settled in, is decent drainage and sun.

In cooler zones, a large container that comes indoors for winter works fine. The foliage is worth the effort on its own. Divide bird of paradise plants every few years to keep them from getting crowded, but otherwise they don’t ask for much.

Pick up a bird of paradise plant from Costa Farms at Home Depot.

6. Mondo Grass

For something low-growing and graphic that holds a planting in place visually, mondo grass does the job reliably. The black variety is especially striking. Its foliage is deep purple-black, especially in full sun to partial shade. Black mondo grass looks more like a design choice than a plant.

Foliage color holds year-round, the plant spreads slowly, and shade doesn’t bother mondo grass at all. That's more than most ground cover plants can say.

When grown between stepping stones or pavers, it fills gaps no other plant will fit. Water plants through the first season, then you can mostly leave them alone – they're not going anywhere.

Get an 18-pack of mondo grass plants from the Home Depot to fill in your landscape fast.

7. Yucca

For cold-climate gardeners who want something with a real desert silhouette, Yucca filamentosa is about as accessible as it gets. This hardy yucca variety can survive down to zone 4 in a lot of cases, which is pretty rare for a plant that looks this sharp.

The leaves push out in a stiff rosette that reads well against a flat mid-mod facade. In summer, it throws a tall flower spike and the rest of the time it just ignores drought, bad soil, and hard winters.

Full sun and fast drainage are the two elements that are necessary to get right. Wet feet from heavy clay soil in winter is a near-guaranteed way to lose a yucca. Avoid that and, otherwise, it’s hard to kill.

Hardy 'Adam's Needle' yucca plants are available online from Nature Hills Nursery.

8. Ornamental Allium

Ornamental alliums give mid-century plantings something most of the other plants on this list can’t – a seasonal moment of exceptional color and form. Those perfectly spherical heads that appear on bare upright stems in late spring look almost unreal, like a landscape architect put them there on purpose. After blooming plants disappear cleanly, which is useful in structured plantings.

Plant bulbs in fall, give them full sun, and make sure they have well-draining soil. Bury bulbs about three times as deep as the bulb is wide. A bulb planting tool from Amazon makes putting in a mass planting of alliums a lot less tedious. It's well worth it to plant en masse because alliums look most striking in groups of ten or more.

Shop spring and summer-blooming varieties of ornamental alliums from Burpee.