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 pawpaw is a small, tropical-looking deciduous tree with large, drooping leaves and the largest edible fruit native to this country. In mid to late summer the green, mango-shaped fruit softens to a fragrant custard, banana and mango in one, around rows of big dark seeds, relished by people and raccoons alike. The crushed leaves carry a distinctive odor, and the whole tree reads more like the tropics than a temperate woodland.
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.
A compact cast iron plant from Vietnam, Aspidistra vietnamensis 'Amanogawa' carries narrow, deep green, upright blades scattered with small creamy white spots, as if dusted with stars. The cultivar name, Japanese for the Milky Way, fits the effect exactly, and the speckled foliage brings light and pattern to a shaded bed where plain green would simply recede.
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.
Most asters have quit by the time Tatarian aster gets started. Aster tataricus opens in late September and keeps going through October and into November, still looking fresh at the first frost, on stems that stand five or six feet without a stake. The flowers are small, barely an inch across, lavender-blue with a yellow eye, but they arrive in flat-topped clusters by the hundred, and at that height they read as a haze of color at eye level rather than a mound down at your knees.
Lady fern is one of the easiest and most graceful of the deciduous ferns, a soft, lacy fountain of finely divided, light green fronds that rise in a loose clump from spring into fall. Athyrium filix-femina brings a fresh, feathery texture to the shade garden and asks almost nothing in return.
A miniature of the lady fern, Athyrium filix-femina 'Minutissimum' keeps every bit of the species' lacy grace at a fraction of the size, building a dense little tuft of delicate, light green fronds just eight to ten inches high. The fine texture and small scale make this dwarf fern a jewel for the front of a shaded bed.
Few ferns light a shady bed like the Japanese painted fern. Athyrium nipponicum 'Pictum' lays soft, arching, triangular fronds in cool silver and gray-green, washed with burgundy along the midribs and stems, a living watercolor for the woodland floor. Named the Perennial Plant of the Year in 2004, this is one of the most popular and most beautiful of all colored ferns.
Tall, upright, and luminous, the ghost fern brings a column of silvery light to the shade garden. Athyrium x 'Ghost' is a chance hybrid between the southern lady fern and the Japanese painted fern, found in Nancy Swell's Richmond, Virginia garden, taking the best of both parents: the upright, vase-shaped stature of the lady fern and the frosted, silver-green coloring of the painted fern, held on dark burgundy stems.
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.
There is a strange romance buried in this plant's history, and 'Golden King' sits on the male side of it. Aucuba japonica reached England in 1783 as a single female, the yellow-flecked gold dust shrub that Victorians went on to plant by the thousand. Aucuba carry their sexes on separate plants, and for eighty years every aucuba in the country was a clone of that one female, waiting on the famous red berries that never came, because Japan had sealed its borders and no male could be had.
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.
There is a book about Aucuba japonica called A Virgin for Eighty Years, which sounds like a romance novel and is, instead, one of the strangest stories in horticulture. The species arrived in England in 1783 as a single female plant. Aucuba is dioecious, male and female flowers on separate plants, so for the next eighty years every aucuba in English gardens was a clone of that one original female. Gardeners knew the plant was meant to bear bright red berries, since reports came back from Japan, but Japan had closed its borders, no male could be had, and they simply waited.
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.
