There are both shrubby and herbaceous hypericums, nearly all with bright yellow, open-faced flowers. Just about all the shrubs are good garden plants, which respond well to pruning if they outgrow their allotted space or become straggly. They produce the bright flowers in succession over a long period. The herbaceous ones are mainly short plants, many of them suited to growing in the rock garden.

Hypericum empetrifolium nanum is the Crowberry leaved St. John's wort, which originates from Greece. It is a dwarf evergreen mat-forming subshrub with grey green leaves on erect or prostrate stems and panicle like clusters of yellow flowers.