UpTick Gold & Bronze is a big-flowered coreopsis: golden petals with a bronze-red ring around the center give every bloom two colors at once. It forms a tidy mound to about 2 feet and flowers from early summer well into fall, drawing bees and butterflies the whole time.

Plant it in full sun with reasonable drainage; loam or sandy soil suits it, and deer usually let it be. Snap off the spent blooms every week or two and it keeps pushing new flowers through Birmingham heat and on toward October.