The Node

Woodlanders' resource center for plant education, how-tos, garden inspiration, and news.

Season

Fall

15 articles

Gardening in Sand: Plants That Want the Soil You Apologize For

How-To · Sandy Soil · The Southeast. How sand behaves, the one planting habit that kills more sandhill natives than drought, and a simple plan for turning the hottest, driest...

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Mint on White Sand: A Field Guide to the Scrub Mints

Field Guide · The Scrub Mints · The Southeast. Every calamint, false rosemary, wild pennyroyal and scrub balm we grow or have grown, the listed species we can only sell...

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Pawpaw (Asimina triloba): The Tropics Came North Once and Left This Behind

Plant Highlight · Asimina triloba · Southeast. For about three weeks in September the woods of the eastern United States produce a custard, and almost nobody notices, because the fruit...

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Hibiscus mutabilis: White by Morning, Red by Dark

Plant Highlight · Hibiscus mutabilis · China and the American South. The cotton rose spends a single day working through three colors, white at dawn, pink by noon, red by...

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The Cedar That Is Not a Cedar

Field Guide, Cryptomeria, Japan and the American South. Japanese cedar has been holding up shrine roofs, sake barrels and Southern property lines for a very long time, all under a...

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The Sage That Saves the Best for Last

Plant Highlight: Salvia leucantha. When the summer border has said everything, Mexican bush sage finally speaks, in a low velvet purple that bees and hummingbirds wait all season to hear.

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The Weight of a Wisteria

Landscape Design, Wisteria, the Southeast. Every April the South goes lavender along the roadsides, and every April somebody decides to plant that. A guide to siting the vine, and choosing...

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Sited by the Nose: A Southern Garden Written in Scent

Essay · The Fragrant Garden · The Southeast. On scent and memory in the Southern garden, and where to plant the tea olive, the sweetshrub, and the jasmine so the...

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The Viburnums: A Field Guide to the Genus That Fuels the Flight

Field Guide, Viburnum, the Southeast. Forty-eight kinds grow in our fields and almost nobody plants them on purpose: a guide to the shrub whose fruit runs on fat, and whose...

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The Quiet Harvest: Saving Seed as the Season Turns

How-To: Saving Native Seed. Late summer is the nursery's second harvest; here is how to gather, clean, and keep native seed so the plants you love sow true next spring.

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Plant It in the Cooling: A Fall Planting Guide for the Southeast

Landscape Design · Fall Planting · The Southeast. In the Southern garden, autumn is the true beginning: a layer-by-layer guide to the in-stock natives worth planting this fall, from canopy...

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The Blueberry That Grew Into a Tree

Plant Highlight · Sparkleberry · The Southeast. Vaccinium arboreum took the blueberry blueprint, added a trunk, cinnamon bark, and a taste for dry limestone, and became a small ornamental tree.

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