Environmental pollution of various contaminants, such as aromatic hydrocarbons, petroleum products, explosives and cyanides, chlorinated solvents, heavy metals (Cr, Cd, Mn, Fe, Zn, Pb) increases day by day due to uncontrolled anthropogenic activities, among them heavy metals are the most important non-biodegradable source of pollution, highly poisonous even present in less amount, put adverse effects on the physical and mental health of human beings. Many physical and chemical methods are already used for the remediation of heavy metals but they are very costly and less effective. Phytoremediation is the mechanism by which developing plants can remove pollutants, processes such as Phytostabilization, phytoextraction, phytovolatilization, and rhizofiltration include heavy metal phytoremediation. In comparison to other plant varieties such as edible crops and medicinal plants, ornamental plants appear to be a more realistic option because they offer a variety of advantages, including the removal of heavy metal pollution, environmental beautification, by-product generation to convince local people and government, lack of involvement in the food chain and other direct human consumption. The introduction of various amendments, fertilizers, soil modifications, chemical chelators, microorganisms and genetic approaches, etc. accelerate phytoremediation. In this review we summarised the effects of heavy metals on human health, Current research on the phytoremediation of contaminated soils with ornamental plants evaluated the phytoremediation capacity against heavy metals and identified specific ornamental plants with high accumulation ability and tolerance to contaminants.