The Grower's Dispatch · South Carolina
A Field Report for the Summer Ahead
Anniversaries worth celebrating, a drought worth taking seriously, and a closer look at what to plant when the rules keep changing.
South Carolina's growing season has always asked a lot of its gardeners: heat that arrives early, humidity that lingers, soils that range from coastal sand to upcountry clay. This summer asks a little more than usual. Before we get into what the land is doing, though, we want to talk about the people doing the long, quiet work of caring for it.
Part One
A Quiet Chorus of Anniversaries
It's a peculiar coincidence that three of the institutions most responsible for South Carolina's native plant literacy are all marking milestone years in 2026. They've done it without much fanfare. No commemorative tote bags that we've seen, no marketing budgets to speak of. But the work they've quietly done over the past three decades has shaped how a generation of Southern gardeners thinks about what belongs in the ground.
The South Carolina Native Plant Society turns thirty
Founded in 1996 by a small group of landscape architects, botanists, and citizen-advocates frustrated that natives were dismissed as roadside weeds, the South Carolina Native Plant Society has grown into eight chapters and over 1,700 members. They were a founding member of the National Native Plant Conservation Alliance, an effort with Lady Bird Johnson behind it, and last year helped draft the state legislation that officially established Native Plant Week in South Carolina.
This past spring the Grand Strand chapter held its annual sale in Conway: venus flytraps, swamp milkweed, purple passionflower, black-eyed Susan. The Lowcountry chapter ran a Mount Pleasant market in the fall. These are not events that draw a crowd because of celebrity speakers. They draw a crowd because someone wants to know what to put under a live oak that won't poison the soil, and because someone else has spent twenty years figuring out an honest answer.
The Society's anniversary celebration on March 17 was, characteristically, a potluck. There will be more events through the year worth keeping an eye on.
The Native Plant Certificate Program turns ten
A decade ago, the South Carolina Botanical Garden and the SCNPS launched a certificate program designed to take serious gardeners deep, not just into plant ID but into plant communities: how a sandhills longleaf system actually functions, what a coastal dune does for the inland forest behind it, why a wet pine savanna holds the kind of orchid diversity it does. The brainchild of former SCBG director Patrick McMillan, it has graduated hundreds of stewards across the state.
The program persists through hurricanes, a pandemic, and the ordinary attrition that thins most education efforts. Classes run spring and fall, with field-based sessions at the Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge and across the Clemson Forest. If you've ever thought about going beyond casual native gardening into something more rigorous, this is the local pathway.
Riverbanks at thirty, too
The Riverbanks Botanical Garden in Columbia opened in 1995 on seventy acres along the west side of the Saluda River. It was recognized this spring by the South Carolina House for its three decades of conservation work, which includes partnerships protecting Schweinitz's sunflower (a federally endangered species you will not find at the average garden center) and the Rocky Shoals spider lily, which blooms in the shoals of the Catawba and Broad rivers in a way that genuinely stops you in your tracks if you've never seen it. Their Planting with a Purpose initiative has put pollinator habitat into community gardens across the Midlands.
"Our history is rich. Our impact is real. But our work is far from finished."
One more conservation moment worth noting before we move on. This spring the Atlanta Botanical Garden announced a collaboration with the South Carolina Botanical Garden and a handful of private landowners to track and protect the pyramid magnolia (Magnolia pyramidata), a rare, small, deciduous magnolia that exists in South Carolina in only a few fragmented coastal-plain populations, many unmonitored for years. The project is supported by the Global Conservation Consortium for Magnolia and the American Public Gardens Association. It's the kind of partnership that doesn't get headlines but matters considerably to the long survival of a species that most Southerners have never knowingly laid eyes on.
A Note from the Nursery
If you're not already a member of SCNPS, the dues are modest and the chapter meetings are genuinely useful. We can vouch for that. Their plant sales, in particular, are good places to find species you won't see anywhere else, and the people running them know their material.
Part Two
The Drought, and Why It Matters
On April 30, the South Carolina Drought Response Committee took an action it hadn't taken since September 2002. With a unanimous vote, it placed all 46 counties in severe drought. Every Lowcountry parish, every Upstate ridge, every Sandhills sandpit and Midlands floodplain. Farmers in Allendale County described some of the worst planting conditions in decades. In Berkeley County, swamps were running at levels not seen since 2019. The committee cited record-low streamflows, declining groundwater, and increased wildfire risk.
The full picture is sobering: September 2025 through March 2026 was the driest such stretch on record for South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina, with records reaching back to 1895. The Southeast typically uses the December-through-March window to recharge its reservoirs, its aquifers, the deep soil layers our trees draw from. This winter, that recharge did not happen. We are entering summer with significantly less stored water in the ground than the state's plant communities, wild and cultivated alike, are built around.
The summer outlook from NOAA does suggest a modest tilt toward above-normal precipitation for the Carolinas through August. We'd love to take that as good news, and we mostly do. But drought experts have been quick to point out something important: summer rain in the Southeast tends to come in the form of convective thunderstorms: short, intense, locally heavy bursts that run off hard surfaces and bypass deep recharge. The kind of soaking, multi-day rain that actually refills the water table is a winter pattern, and this winter didn't provide one.
What that means in practical terms: every plant in your landscape that established its root system during normal Southeastern moisture is now asking that same root system to handle a different climate. Established trees that have lived comfortably for forty years on natural rainfall may show stress this summer. Dogwoods, with their famously shallow root systems, are particularly vulnerable. Shrubs planted in the past three years, before drip irrigation went in, may have rooted too shallowly to find moisture now.
What we've been watching alongside the drought
A few related pressures worth knowing about, briefly:
Wildfire. The Forestry Commission responded to more than 1,200 wildfires across South Carolina between January and April, burning over 11,600 acres. A statewide burn ban issued in mid-April was lifted on May 1 after isolated rainfall, but the underlying drought status remained unchanged. The National Interagency Fire Center has projected above-normal wildfire risk for the Carolinas through at least May, and air quality has been intermittently affected by smoke from larger fires in Georgia and Florida.
A new pest in Malvaceae. A small leafhopper, new to South Carolina and first noticed in summer 2025 on a hibiscus in the Lowcountry, has prompted a coordinated scientific response across the Southeast. It causes a condition called hopperburn: yellowing, curling leaves, eventual decline. It hit okra growers hard last season. Whether it overwintered here is still unclear, but Clemson entomologists are watching the ornamental trade carefully as a possible vector. If you grow hibiscus, mallows, hollyhock, okra, or any other Malvaceae, scout your plants more carefully than usual this summer and report unusual leaf curling to your county Extension office.
The yellow-legged hornet. A non-native predatory hornet first detected in Beaufort County two years ago has now been confirmed in York County, meaning it has, by some means, crossed from the Lowcountry into the Upstate. Clemson has deployed over 4,200 traps across nine counties and removed more than 170 embryo nests. The hornet preys on honey bees and other pollinators. Public reports are how the response program learns where the species is moving next. If you keep bees or notice unusual hornet activity near a hive or fruit, the Department of Plant Industry wants to hear from you.
Other ongoing pressures. Emerald ash borer remains established in six Upstate counties. Laurel wilt continues to threaten sassafras and redbay across 22 counties. Asian longhorned beetle has expanded its known range from the original Hollywood-Ravenel detection area into Mount Pleasant. None of these is new, exactly, but all are worth knowing about if you grow trees or steward woodland.
A plant that has lived comfortably for forty years on natural rainfall is now being asked to handle a different climate.
Part Three
What to Actually Do About All This
The temptation in a summer like this one is to overreact: to water everything daily, to mulch the way you would in a normal year, to plant the same showy annuals you always do and hope for the best. The better instinct is to slow down and let the season teach you which of your plants are actually built for it.
For the lawn and the established landscape
Clemson's Home and Garden Information Center is consistent on this point: mow at the higher end of the recommended range, water deeply and infrequently rather than shallowly and often, and accept that an inch a week is enough for an established warm-season lawn. Overwatering encourages weeds, fungal disease, and shallow root systems. The last of these is exactly what you don't want a plant to have heading into August. For homeowners with centipede, bermuda, zoysia, or St. Augustine, dormancy is not the same as death. Letting the lawn brown out and rest is a legitimate strategy, and one many of our neighbors have already adopted.
The watering principle that matters most this year: one good morning soaking that reaches eight or ten inches into the soil teaches roots to go down looking for water. Daily shallow watering teaches them to stay near the surface, which is the worst possible habit to encourage in a drought year. If you're on irrigation, audit the system this month. Drip lines and soaker hoses deliver substantially more water to the plant per gallon used than overhead spray, and the difference matters more this summer than it ever has.
Mulch matters more than usual this year. A three-inch layer of coarse mulch around trees and shrubs cools the soil, conserves what moisture does reach the root zone, and suppresses the weeds that would otherwise compete for it. Top-dress beds with compost or worm castings if you can. Skip the synthetic fertilizers until the rain returns in a meaningful way. Pushing growth on a stressed plant is a way to lose it faster.
For new planting
Summer is not the moment we'd ordinarily recommend for ambitious planting, and this summer less than most. If you do plant, plant carefully: water in deeply at installation, mulch generously, and check the soil moisture by hand every few days for the first month. Better still, use the next several weeks to think and observe. Make notes about what's struggling and what's thriving in your existing landscape, and plan for fall. Fall is the right planting season in the South, and it's about to become the only sensible one.
Observe before you order
One of the gifts of a hard season is that it tells you the truth about your garden. Plants that have been getting by on supplemental water and good intentions will show you which they are. The corner that always dries first will be obvious. The shrub you've been propping up for three years will finally make its case for replacement. Walk your beds with a notebook in hand. Pay attention to which native volunteers are pushing through stress without help. Those are the plants and the locations to build around when fall planting starts.
It's also worth taking honest stock of what your landscape is actually for. The lawn you maintain for the dog is different from the lawn you maintain for guests. The bed by the front walk works harder than the one by the side gate. In a drought, you have to make choices. The choices are easier if you've thought about them in advance.
Scout for trouble, and report what you find
Drought-stressed plants are more vulnerable to insect and disease pressure, so a weekly walk through the garden with eyes open matters more this season than usual. Spider mites accelerate in hot dry weather. Squash bugs and vine borers are difficult to control once established. Aphids and thrips multiply quickly on stressed new growth.
If you grow hibiscus, mallows, hollyhock, okra, or any other Malvaceae, look closely at the underside of leaves now and again. The new leafhopper that turned up in the Lowcountry last summer is being tracked statewide, and Clemson Extension wants to know where it's appearing. If you keep bees, the Department of Plant Industry has the same standing interest in yellow-legged hornet sightings. Reporting unusual finds is one of the simplest ways a home gardener can contribute to the larger conservation effort, and these programs depend on the eyes and reports of people who actually walk their gardens.
Plants that have earned their place in a summer like this
We've leaned on the Clemson HGIC recommendations and our own observation at the nursery to suggest a handful of species that hold up well to the heat-plus-drought-plus-occasional-deluge pattern the Carolinas are now living with. Each is currently in the nursery. None is a miracle plant. All of them have proven themselves over multiple stressful seasons.
The signature canopy tree of the coastal South, and one of the most drought-tolerant oaks in North American horticulture once it's settled. A young live oak takes its time, then suddenly doesn't. The mature form is the architecture you remember from Beaufort and Charleston: low spreading limbs, evergreen canopy, the slow patience of a tree that has agreed to live for three centuries. Tolerates salt spray, brief flooding, and the kind of compacted urban soil that kills lesser trees. If you have room and the long view, it's hard to plant better.
One of the most drought-tolerant oaks in the Southern flora, and almost no one plants it on purpose, which is a small heartbreak. Post oak is the tree that holds the dry uplands, the sandhill ridges, the thin-soiled places nothing else wants. Slow-growing, irregularly branched, deeply rooted, long-lived. Where a red maple would surrender and a willow oak would sulk, post oak just keeps going. If you have a difficult dry site and the patience to plant for the next generation, this is the right answer.
A drought-tough evergreen shrub or small tree in the myrtle family, with aromatic foliage that smells faintly of nutmeg when crushed and bark that flakes to reveal cinnamon and gray. 'Geode' is the selection we've been working with at the nursery for its compact habit and clean lines. White flowers in spring give way to red fruits that birds work through fast. Native to peninsular Florida and the West Indies, hardy through coastal South Carolina, increasingly viable inland as winters warm. Holds up to drought and salt without complaint.
A xeric specialist from the Gulf Coast sandhills, federally rare in the wild, and made for the kind of dry, sandy, well-drained spot where ordinary perennials sulk. Silver-grey aromatic foliage, lavender flowers that pollinators work through steadily, a compact mounding habit that holds its shape without pruning. Smells like rosemary when crushed because the chemistry is close. Plant it in your worst-drained, sunniest, hottest bed and watch it thrive. Will not tolerate wet feet.
An undersung Southeastern native that ought to be in more gardens. A low aromatic sub-shrub native to dry pine woods and sandhills across Georgia, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle, just edging into South Carolina. Lavender-pink tubular flowers from late summer through frost, exactly when other things are giving up. The foliage smells of mint and pine and something faintly medicinal when you brush past it. Tolerates poor soil, drought, partial shade. Bees love it.
A native woodland grass that solves problems other plants create. Tolerates dry shade, wet shade, sun, drought, periodic flooding, and the rooty edge of a tree where nothing else will grow. The flat, oat-like seed heads dangle on arching stems through summer, turning bronze in fall, persisting into winter. Self-sows generously if you let it, which is usually exactly what you want. The grass to plant under a high-branched tree where you've given up on everything else.
One of the most useful native perennials for unpredictable Southern weather, despite the common name. Tolerates both drought and standing water in the same calendar year. Tall, narrow, late-blooming. The yellow daisy flowers open in October and November when most of the garden is done, providing late-season nectar for migrating monarchs and resident pollinators. Cut back in midsummer for a shorter, sturdier plant if six feet is too much. Otherwise let it run.
A Mexican mountain salvia with a stem the color of dried blood and yellow flower spires that open in late summer and run through frost. Heat-tolerant, drought-flexible once established, and a strong performer in the kind of Carolina summer where ordinary salvias collapse. The yellow is unusual in the salvia genus and looks remarkable beside late-blooming Mexican sunflower or against the orange foliage of fall-coloring sumac. Hummingbirds work it constantly in late September.
If we could only plant one perennial for pollinators in a drought year, it would be this one. Mountain mint pulls a wider diversity of native bees, wasps, beetles, and flies than almost any other Eastern North American plant on record. The silvery bracts that surround the flower clusters make the whole plant look frosted from a distance. Tolerates drought, partial shade, and poor soils. Spreads steadily by rhizome, which is a feature rather than a bug if you give it room to do its work.
Nine plants is hardly a complete picture. We've passed over the agaves and the cardamom, the figs and the citrus, all of which will reward a hot summer in their own ways. The HGIC's Plants that Tolerate Drought and Perennials That Persist Through Droughts and Floods fact sheets are both excellent starting points if you want to go deeper, and our catalog runs longer than this list suggests. But if you read this far looking for something to plant, the nine above are honest answers.
And while you're thinking about it: where to go and see plants this summer
One of the small consolations of a difficult growing season is that the gardens worth visiting are at their most instructive when conditions are hard. You learn more from a public garden in August than you do in April. A few worth the trip:
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June 4–7
South Carolina Festival of Flowers
Greenwood. Topiary displays, garden tours, concerts. Topiaries up all month. The state's longest-running summer flower event.
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Ongoing
Moore Farms Botanical Garden
Lake City. Over 600 varieties of South Carolina native genotypes, possibly the largest assemblage of state natives in cultivation anywhere. Visit by tour or scheduled event.
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Saturdays
Historic Columbia Tree Trek
Hampton-Preston Mansion. Guided tours of a remarkable historic tree collection, led by Horticulture Manager Chris Mathis. Free and worth your morning.
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Year-round
Riverbanks Botanical Garden
Columbia. Thirtieth-anniversary year. Worth a visit for the pollinator plantings alone, and the Rocky Shoals spider lily exhibits if you can time it right.
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Spring + Fall
SCNPS Chapter Plant Sales
Lowcountry, Midlands, Upstate, Grand Strand. Check scnps.org for dates. Reliably the best place in the state to find native species you can't get elsewhere.
From Our Catalog
Plants Built for the Summer Ahead
A curated selection of drought-flexible natives and proven Southern heirlooms, all chosen for the climate we're actually growing in.
Browse the CollectionWith dirt under our fingernails,
The Woodlanders team
