These are excellent rock garden plants, making wide mats or mounds of low green or grey-green foliage, and in spring smothered with masses of four-petalled flowers in a range of colours from white to red and purple. They fit very nicely into all sorts of situations including banks and slopes, beds and borders, and along the edges of paths. They respond well to being cut back after flowering in order to maintain a compact shape.

Aubrieta pinardi is a species from Greece and Turkey, where it grows in well-drained, stony places that are quite dry in summer. Try it in a sunny rockery or raised bed, or perhaps in a pot in a greenhouse or alpine house. It is worth the effort, as it can make a great display of its rich purple (sometimes described as pink - perhaps somewhere in between) flowers, over the typical Aubrieta spreading mat.