Rain Garden SetTurn a wet spot into one of the most dynamic parts of the garden. Our Rain Garden Set brings together six moisture-loving plants chosen for their bold texture, long season of interest, and ability to thrive where water lingers. From the elegant spring flowers of Iris virginica to the vivid late-season color of Boltonia asteroides and Vernonia noveboracensis, this collection creates a richly layered planting that feels lush, architectural, and alive from spring through fall.
Think of this as a living blueprint. The Southern Structure Kit brings together six bold, beautiful, and botanically significant plants that offer backbone, texture, and seasonal brilliance to the Southeastern landscape. These plugs aren't fleeting fillers — they are the shrubs and perennials that define borders, screen views, feed birds, and turn heads.
Thelypteris acuminata is a handsome evergreen fern from the woodlands of Japan and eastern Asia, grown for glossy green fronds that arch softly and hold their color through the year. Unlike the many deciduous ferns that vanish in winter, this species keeps a steady, structural presence in the shaded garden, one of the reasons the plant is prized where an evergreen fern is wanted.
This fern is a tidy spreading groundcover fern native to eastern and southeastern Asia but closely related to our native Beech Ferns. It is deciduous after frost and is easily grown and multiplied. Does not spread rapidly but can be speeded up by dividing and replanting. A good fern for shady moist sites with fertile soil.
The southern shield fern carries a longer pedigree than most ferns in cultivation. The type specimen was collected by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland near Cumanacoa, in the cloud-shrouded country around Caripe in northeastern Venezuela, during their five-year expedition through the equinoctial Americas. Decades later the German botanist Carl Sigismund Kunth, Humboldt's assistant in Paris and the man who would spend years describing the ten thousand and more specimens the explorers shipped home, became the namesake when Nicaise Auguste Desvaux formally described the species in 1827 as Nephrodium kunthii. C.V. Morton moved the fern into Thelypteris in 1967, and recent molecular work (Fawcett and Smith, 2021) has shifted the name again into Pelazoneuron, though the older binomial remains the one in common horticultural use.
A fern with erect-arching habit. Large, lacy triangular fronds. Native to Old World tropics but naturalized north to SC and west to TX. (See MIC) One quart container.
False Lupine is a tall perennial in the pea family. It has blue-green leaves with three leaflets and is notable for the showy spikes of bright yellow flowers in spring. Plant in a sunny bed or border with well-drained soil. Armitage (Herbaceous Perennial Plants) says it is "overlooked" as a garden plant and that "On a three-year-old clump at the University of Georgia, over 30 flower stems were produced". Native from Maine to Alabama but in relatively few and widely scattered sites.
The Thomasville citrangequat is more than a fruit tree, a living piece of Southern horticultural history. First fruited in Thomasville, Georgia, this remarkable hybrid was raised in 1909 by the legendary USDA citrus breeder Walter T. Swingle and formally named in 1923. The tree stands as a pioneering achievement in citrus breeding: a three-way cross combining the cold-hardy Willits citrange, itself a cross of sweet orange and trifoliate orange, with the Nagami kumquat, Fortunella margarita.
A Victorian-era English selection of one of the great trees of North America. The species, Thuja plicata, the western red cedar, is the dominant conifer of the Pacific Northwest coastal rainforest, the tree that towers 150 to 200 feet above the forest floor in old-growth stands of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and northern California, with individual specimens documented at over a thousand years old. To the Coast Salish, Haida, Tlingit, Kwakwaka'wakw, and other Pacific Northwest Indigenous peoples, western red cedar is the Tree of Life: the wood used for longhouses, dugout canoes, totem poles, and ceremonial regalia; the bark woven into baskets, mats, capes, and dress; the whole tree a structural and cultural foundation for thousands of years. That natural rot-resistance comes from the same volatile terpenoids that give the crushed foliage a sweet, cedary fragrance, the smell of the Pacific Northwest forest itself.
'Green Giant' is an excellent large dark green conifer possibly a hybrid between Thuja plicata and Thuja standishii, both of which are native to northwestern North America however 'Green Giant' was selected as a seedling from a nursery bed in Denmark in 1935 ! It has a broad pyramidal habit and rapid growth rate and is an outstanding conifer for moist soil, sun to partial shade. The foliage is somewhat bronze in winter.
A dwarf form of one of Japan's legendary Five Sacred Trees of Kiso, the goboku no kinbatsu, a select group of conifers protected by feudal law for centuries, reserved for imperial residences and temple construction, where commoners caught poaching the wood faced execution. The species, Thujopsis dolabrata, is endemic to Japan and known there as asunaro, a name that translates beautifully and a little wistfully as tomorrow it will become hinoki, a nod to the tree's resemblance to the more revered hinoki cypress, forever almost but not quite the more famous tree. Thujopsis is the sole species in the entire genus.
A large leaf (3 to 4 inches wide) form with light green leaves with prominent red veination. Nice foamy white clusters of flowers in spring. Rich, moist, woodland soil with shade to semishade. (See ARM)
Tiarella is a beautiful woodland wildflower native to shady rich woods in the eastern U.S. and Canada. It produces nice foliage and spikes of foamy white flowers in spring. The typical Tiarella cordifolia spreads by runners but this is a clump forming variety from the southern mountains. The flowers have a pinkish tint and will continue flowering longer if old flower stalks are cut off. Plant in rich humusy soil in shade and keep moist.
Tibouchina granulosa, the purple glory tree, is a Brazilian showstopper long grown in Florida and the warm South, a large shrub or small tree in frost-free gardens and a root-hardy dieback perennial where winters brush freezing. Glossy, deeply pleated, prominently veined leaves set off the flowers, which come smaller but far more abundantly than those of the better-known princess flower, Tibouchina urvilleana, so the whole plant seems dusted with purple through the warm months.
This Tibouchina is a tropical tree native to Brazil. It may not be cold hardy except in south Florida where Gardino Nursery gives the following account. "This pink form of Tibouchina is very rare in this country. Even in its native country of Brazil, they are scarce compared with regular Tibouchina granulosa which produces purple flowers. Tibouchina granulosa in North America is confined to the most southern states (zone 10) and marginal at zone 9. Here, they rarely reach 20' in height and quite often look more like large shrubs than trees. They are also suitable for pot culture in colder climates and can be kept outside as long as temperatures are above freezing. Unlike most flowering trees, the Tibouchina granulosa can flower at least twice a year and in well maintained specimens you can see flowers most of the year. This Tibouchina prefers full to partial sun and likes acidic soil. The soil also must have good drainage. It is very important at planting not to plant it too deep into the new soil. They are very sensitive in that regard and can decline very quickly if that occurs. It is advisable to remove the spent flowers, or even trim back the tree a little bit after the flowers. This will encourage bushiness and will speed up the resprouting and reflowering. They should be regularly fertilized. The use of an acidic fertilizer may be needed depending on your local conditions. A light frost can burn the tops and if the damage is not severe, the tree should come back with no problem." We propagated this from material at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia where it may be a "die-back" shrub.
Cut back plants after the frost kills the tops. Mound 10 inches of coarse sand over the stubs. Mulch over with pine straw. As weather warms, remove this covering to allow new shoots to emerge. Given rich soil and ample water, these plants will thrive during hot summers.
