Products

Long blooming yellow daisies for dry shade in a home garden or wild garden. (See RAD)

Hardiness

Zones 6–9

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Tall growing prarie sunflowers with dramatic, deeply cut leaves. (See ARM)

Hardiness

Zones 5–8

Cup plant is a giant of the summer prairie, a statuesque perennial that rises on stout, square stems to eight feet or more and lifts a crown of bright yellow, daisy-like flowers above the border. The name comes from a quirk of the foliage: the large, coarse leaves are perfoliate, joined in pairs around the stem to form a shallow cup that catches and holds rainwater. Silphium perfoliatum belongs to the sunflower tribe of the aster family, Asteraceae, and shares that clan's generosity of bloom.

Hardiness

Zones 4–8

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

4–8 ft.

Spread

2–3 ft.

Bloom

Yellow

Plant type

Perennial

Traditional use

detoxification & cleansing, respiratory support, pain relief, digestive health

Gesneriads are supposed to be houseplants. Somebody should tell Sinningia sellovii, which comes out of a hard woody tuber the size of a fist, throws arching stems three or four feet long, hangs them with scarlet tubular flowers from early summer until frost, and then dies back to the ground and does the whole thing again the following year in USDA zone 7b. Gardeners who know the family only through florist gloxinias tend to find this genuinely disorienting, which is a good reason to grow the plant near the front gate.

Hardiness

Zones 7–11

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

3–4 ft.

Spread

2–3 ft.

Bloom

Red

Plant type

Perennial

Here is a tree almost nobody in American horticulture has grown, and the reason is not that the plant is difficult. Sinoadina racemosa is simply obscure: a deciduous member of the madder family ranging from northern Myanmar and Thailand through southern China, Taiwan, the Ryukyu Islands, and into Japan, running fifteen to forty feet tall with grey trunk bark and smooth young branches. In summer the tree carries small flowers packed tight into spherical heads, the heads themselves gathered into open terminal panicles, which is exactly what the epithet racemosa is pointing at.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

15–40 ft.

Spread

12–25 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Tree

This large deciduous shrub was recently reclassified as a Calycanthus. It is somewhat like our native Calycanthus floridus but with larger 6 - 10 inch glossy leaves. The cream-white blooms in late spring are larger than North American Calycanthus species flowers but not scented. Should be planted in partial to full shade where it blooms in mid to late spring. Prefers consistantly moist soil, but do not over water. A relatively recent introduction from China. Woodlanders was one of the first nurseries to offer this plant in the U.S. See our listing for hybrids between this and our native Calycanthus including 'Hartlege Wine' and 'Venus'

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Height

8–10 ft.

Spread

6–8 ft.

Hardiness

Zones 6–8

Height

20–25 ft.

Spread

10–15 ft.

Sinojackia xylocarpa is a rare flowering treasure from the hills of eastern China, a deciduous small tree or large shrub that few gardeners have ever met. Known as the jacktree, the species belongs to the storax family, Styracaceae, a close cousin of the snowbells and silverbells, and carries the same poetry of spring: pendant, bell-shaped white flowers that dangle beneath arching branches like small antique lanterns swaying in a breeze.

Hardiness

Zones 6–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

10–20 ft.

Spread

5–10 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Tree

(To 3') Perennial from moist streamside location. Showy red-orange flowers. A Lobelia relative somewhat like our native Cardinal Flower (Lobelia Cardinalis). Salta Province.

Hardiness

Zones 8–9

Low growing. It is very showy in the spring with clusters of blue flowers, most with yellow eyes. Plant in sunny location with moist but well drained soil. Easy care.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Grows in clumps that are easily mistaken for grass when the plant is not in flower. Produces several flowers one at a time from a single spathe in spring, summer dormant. (See B&T)

Hardiness

Zones 4–9

Sisyrinchium nashii 'Suwannee', Nash's blue-eyed grass, is a small, enchanting native perennial of the Southeastern United States, selected from populations in Florida's Suwannee River basin. Despite the common name, this is no grass at all but a diminutive member of the iris family, Iridaceae, betraying the kinship in the fine, flattened, fan-arranged foliage and the six-parted, star-shaped flowers. The species honors George V. Nash, the American botanist who described so much of the Southeastern flora.

Hardiness

Zones 6–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

8–12 in.

Spread

12–18 in.

Bloom

Blue

Plant type

Perennial

This curious little Smilax is one of the quieter treasures in the Woodlanders catalog, a deciduous groundcover built of fine, twiggy, interlacing stems and small leaves, so densely and geometrically branched that the plant earned the house name Chicken Wire Plant. A member of the greenbrier family, Smilacaceae, this dwarf relative of the climbing greenbriers trades the usual vining habit for a low, intricate, shrubby tangle.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Part Shade / Full Shade

Height

8–10 in.

Spread

2–4 ft.

Plant type

Groundcover

Dwarf greenbrier is the gentlest member of a prickly clan. Where most of the greenbriers, the Smilax vines, arm themselves with vicious hooks, Smilax pumila comes up soft and unarmed, a low, scrambling, evergreen groundcover of the Southeastern coastal plain, safe to handle and easy to place. The mottled, arrow-shaped leaves hold a quiet, marbled green through the year, and on female plants clusters of bright orange to red berries glow in the winter undergrowth like drops of fire.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Part Shade / Full Shade

Height

12–15 in.

Spread

24–36 in.

Plant type

Groundcover

Traditional use

pain relief, digestive health, detoxification & cleansing

Florists across the South have a name for the green that turns up at every wedding worth attending and every Christmas mantel worth dressing: Jackson vine. Southern smilax, if that is how you came up. The town of Evergreen, Alabama took its name from this very plant, which gives you some idea how far Smilax smallii has wound itself into the region's notion of celebration. Looped down a staircase, run along an altar, drawn the length of a table, they are the foliage that announces something is happening here.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

20–30 ft.

Spread

3–6 ft.

Plant type

Vine

(See RAD)

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

This vigorous evergreen vine blooms from mid summer to mid fall. The showy star shaped white flowers are tinged with blue and produce a wonderful fragrance. It can grow in sandy soil, clay, or rich gardening soil and can withstand both humid and dry climates. Plant in full or half sun. It is native to Brazil.

Hardiness

Zones 8–10

Height

15–20 ft.

As the species, but with variegated foliage.

Hardiness

Zones 8–10

This South American shrub is perhaps correctly Lycianthes rantonetti. It is a scrambling vine-like shrub which is best trained up as a trellis or espalier plant where it can get up to 15 feet in mild areas. It is valued for the loose clusters of bright violet flowers produced over a long period. Needs sun and regular moisture. Can be grown as a container plant and given greenhouse protection where climate is not subtropical.

Hardiness

Zones 8–10

Height

6–8 ft.

Spread

3–4 ft.