Swamp milkweed brings beauty and biodiversity to the moist garden. Asclepias incarnata is a native perennial prized for domed clusters of rosy pink, vanilla-scented flowers and for a vital role in feeding pollinators, native to wet meadows, streambanks, and lowland prairies across much of North America. The plant takes happily to rain gardens, wet soils, and sunny borders alike, a natural for the ecologically minded gardener.
The white-flowered form of swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata 'Ice Ballet' carries the same upright, well-mannered habit as the species but trades rosy pink for clusters of pure, cool white, held atop sturdy three-to-four-foot stems through summer. The effect is fresh and luminous in a moist border, and just as useful to wildlife.
Butterfly weed is the orange star of the summer meadow, a strong-growing native perennial of eastern North America and a longtime favorite of gardeners. Flower color ranges from clear yellow to nearly red, but the typical Asclepias tuberosa blazes a vivid orange that butterflies, and the eye, find from across the garden.
Hardiness
Zones 4–9
Light
Full Sun
Height
12–24 in.
Spread
12–18 in.
Bloom
Orange
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
respiratory support, digestive health, pain relief, reproductive health
Asimina obovata is the bigflower pawpaw, a Florida native that carries the largest, showiest blooms in a genus better known for its fruit. The pawpaws are the temperate outliers of the Annonaceae, the custard apple family whose tropical members include the cherimoya, soursop, and ylang-ylang, and Asimina alone among them ventures north into the sandy uplands of the American Southeast. The genus name descends from an early Native American word for the fruit, carried into English through the French asiminier, while obovata describes the egg-shaped leaves, broadest above the middle.
The cast iron plant earned the name honestly. Aspidistra elatior is the toughest of evergreen foliage plants, sending up broad, glossy, dark green blades straight from the soil and holding strong form year round in conditions that defeat almost everything else. A Victorian parlor favorite for surviving gaslight and neglect, the cast iron plant is just as valuable in the deep shade of the garden.
A boldly striped form of the cast iron plant, Aspidistra elatior 'Variegata' carries the same broad, leathery, evergreen blades, each brushed lengthwise with bands of creamy white over deep glossy green. The variegation lights up a shaded corner, and the toughness is all there too: this is a near-indestructible evergreen for difficult, low-light places.
Smooth aster is one of the cleanest and most dependable of the fall natives, and 'Bluebird' is among the best forms. Aster laevis 'Bluebird' builds an upright, vase-shaped clump of smooth, blue-green foliage, then opens, in late summer and fall, sprays of violet-blue daisies centered in gold, a generous late feast for bees and butterflies as the season winds down.
Aromatic aster is the toughest and most fragrant of the fall asters, and 'Raydon's Favorite' is the classic selection. Aster oblongifolius 'Raydon's Favorite' forms a dense, rounded mound of small leaves that release a clean, balsam-like scent when brushed, and in early to mid fall vanishes under a haze of lavender-blue, gold-centered daisies.
Aucuba chinensis is the lesser-known Chinese cousin of the familiar gold dust plant, a rare, broad, evergreen shrub for deep shade. The thick, leathery, dark green leaves are coarsely toothed and dusted with scattered yellow flecks, holding their color year round and bringing a glossy, tropical-looking presence to a shaded bed.
Most aucubas demand a matchmaker, a male plant set near a female before a single red berry will form, but Aucuba japonica 'Rozannie' needs no such arrangement. This compact, deep green selection is self-fertile, setting large, glossy scarlet fruit without a separate pollinator, and fruiting even more heavily when a male happens to grow nearby. Add to that lustrous, coarsely toothed, unspotted foliage and a tidy three-to-four-foot frame, and 'Rozannie' becomes one of the most useful aucubas for a shaded garden.
Aucuba japonica is one of the great problem-solvers of the shade garden, a glossy broadleaf evergreen that thrives in the dry, difficult shade where few other shrubs will, and var. borealis is the toughest of the clan. Drawn from the cold northern reaches of the plant's Japanese range, this small-leaved form was selected for hardiness, holding very shiny, dark green, leathery leaves through winters that would burn a common aucuba. The genus name is a Latin rendering of the Japanese aokiba, for the ever-green leaves.
This is one of the quiet mysteries of the Woodlanders collection, a narrow-leaved evergreen aucuba received years ago from the U.S. National Arboretum under the name Aucuba himalayica, and quite possibly the slender japonica form known as 'Longifolia' instead. Either way the plant is a striking departure from the usual aucuba, trading broad, spotted leaves for long, willow-like, finely serrated blades of glossy dark green. Woodlanders has not seen this aucuba offered anywhere else, which makes the plant a true collector's piece whatever the correct name proves to be.
Baccharis halimifolia is a plant of edges and thresholds, growing where the land loosens and blurs into water: salt marsh margins, ditches, tidal creeks, and back dunes. In fall, when most things are shutting down, the groundsel bush erupts into a soft storm of white seed fluff, like a marsh firework frozen mid-explosion. This is the shrub that coastal Louisiana calls manglier, that botanists call groundsel bush or eastern baccharis, and that local healers have quietly trusted for generations.
Hardiness
Zones 6–10
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
8–10 ft.
Spread
5–8 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, immune support, detoxification & cleansing, general wellness
Baptisia alba, white wild indigo, is a striking native perennial of tall spires of white, pea-like flowers over deep blue-green foliage. Native to the eastern and central United States, the species carries a rich history as a dye plant, used by Native American peoples and early settlers as a substitute for true indigo, and the genus name, from the Greek bapto, to dip, records that role.
When Woodlanders began in 1980, this was about the only Baptisia known to gardeners; we went on to introduce many of the species that have since become popular garden perennials. Baptisia australis, blue wild indigo, is a long-lived native, essentially a prairie plant of open glades on limestone soil, with handsome olive-green compound leaves topped in spring by spikes of bright indigo-blue, pea-like flowers.
Baptisia megacarpa, the Apalachicola or bigpod wild indigo, is a rare and remarkable native of the floodplains and forested slopes of the Florida Panhandle, southeastern Alabama, and southwestern Georgia. The species grows on sandy ridges and stream terraces in the Chattahoochee River drainage, finely tuned to that particular corner of the South.
Baptisia minor is the dwarf of the blue false indigos, a compact native perennial that gives all the drama of the well-known Baptisia australis on a smaller, tidier frame. Often treated botanically as Baptisia australis var. minor, the plant stands lower and more compact, yet carries full-sized spires of indigo-blue, pea-shaped flowers held well clear of the blue-green foliage. Much admired in the Woodlanders garden, this is a perennial that settles into a sunny bed for decades.
Baptisia sphaerocarpa, yellow wild indigo, is the sunny member of the wild indigo clan, a tough, rounded native perennial topped in spring with short, dense spikes of clear bright yellow, pea-like flowers over fresh blue-green foliage. Compact and shrubby, the plant brings strong color and structure to a sunny border.
Called Philippine violet, though neither Philippine nor a violet, Barleria cristata is a showy subtropical shrub that saves its display for the close of the year, opening dark blue-violet, trumpet-shaped flowers through late summer and autumn when much of the garden is winding down. A perennial in zones 8 and 9 and a four-to-six-foot shrub in zone 10, native to India and Myanmar.
Hardiness
Zones 8–11
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
4–6 ft.
Spread
24–30 in.
Bloom
Blue
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, topical applications, pain relief, general wellness
Hardy begonia is the surprise of the shade border: a true begonia that survives a cold winter. Begonia grandis carries large, pointed, olive-green leaves lit with red veins and flushed deep rose-red beneath, and in late summer and fall hangs loose clusters of soft pink flowers on red-tinted stems, a cool, luminous note when most shade plants have finished.
