The Node
Woodlanders' resource center for plant education, how-tos, garden inspiration, and news.
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Ilex verticillata: The Holly That Stands Bare in December
How-To · Holly Pollination · Southeast. Every winter someone writes to us about a holly that flowers faithfully and fruits never, and the answer is almost always the same, and...
Myrcianthes fragrans: The Shrub That Comes in Twos
Plant Highlight · Myrcianthes fragrans · Florida and the Caribbean. Twin berries on a forked stalk, two common names that disagree about the plant entirely, and a nutmeg scent hiding...
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...
Cumberland Rosemary, and Why We Only Sell One in South Carolina
Plant Highlight · Conradina verticillata · The Cumberland Plateau. A rosemary-scented shrub from Tennessee river bars, federally threatened since 1991, grown in Aiken and bound by law to stay in...
The Rosemary That Isn't
Essay · The scrub mints · Aiken, South Carolina. On the calamints and false rosemaries: small, stubborn, wonderfully scented shrubs that grow where almost nothing else will, spent two centuries...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Physic in the Hedgerow: Southeastern Native Plants and Their Medicinal Past
Education · Medicinal Natives · The Southeast. Four in-stock native plants with a genuine, documented healing history, and an honest word about the ones that only look the part.
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...
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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