Lovely plants for the rock garden, these a dwarf shrublets with tiny blue-grey leaves. The tips of the branches carry dense head of many flowers, usually pale pink, often scented. They benefit from being cut back after flowering, when they will produce new shoots, and give neat, compact plants.

Aethionema grandiflorum is a woody subshrub with blue-green linear leaves. From late spring it produces lovely, full racemes of pale to deep pink four-petalled flowers. From sunny limestone sites in W. Asia, this plant works well in a rock garden or wall crevice.