For gardeners in a hurry. Fast-growing plants close the gap between a bare new garden and a full one, putting on real size in a season or two to give shade, screening, and structure while the slower, longer-lived plantings catch up.
Salvia uliginosa, the bog sage, is an airy, sky-blue perennial grown for clouds of clear, cool blue flowers held on tall, slender, branching stems from midsummer into fall. The species name uliginosa means of marshes, and the plant lives up to it, thriving in the moist ground most sages refuse, so the bog sage fills a niche few others in the genus can.
Salvia urticifolia, the nettleleaf sage, is an uncommon herbaceous perennial native to the Appalachians and the wider Southeast, grown for cool blue-to-violet flowers set off by a pair of white marks in the throat. The bloom comes in the freshness of mid to late spring, the flowers hovering above serrated, nettle-like leaves, and in a generous year a lighter second flush may follow in late summer.
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
Stauntonia hexaphylla is a handsome, vigorous evergreen climber from the woodlands of Japan, Korea, and China, grown as much for glossy year-round foliage as for the famous fruit. The palmate leaves are cut into five to seven leathery, dark-green leaflets, held on a strong, twining vine that clothes a support densely from top to bottom. A member of the Lardizabalaceae, Stauntonia counts Akebia, the chocolate vine, and Decaisnea, the blue-sausage tree, as relatives.
Styrax obassia, the fragrant snowbell, is the bold-leaved cousin of the more familiar Japanese snowbell, a small deciduous tree from the mountain woodlands of Japan, Korea, and China. Where Styrax japonicus hides small bells beneath fine, layered branches, the fragrant snowbell wears large, rounded, almost tropical leaves up to eight inches across, and hangs long, drooping chains of white, bell-shaped flowers that carry a sweet perfume through the late-spring garden.
Copper Canyon daisy is a big, aromatic, autumn-flowering marigold from the mountains of southern Arizona and adjacent northern Mexico, grown as much for the scent as the show. Brush against the finely divided, fern-like foliage and the plant releases a strong, distinctive fragrance, a mix of citrus, anise, and marigold that some find intoxicating and others frankly pungent. Tagetes lemmonii builds a soft, shrubby mound three to four feet high and wider still.
Imagine a shrub that looks like a conifer caught in an airy, pink-flowering daydream. Tamarix ramosissima, often called tamarisk or saltcedar, is a deciduous shrub or small tree with fine, scale-like leaves that read as cedar from ten feet away, yet drop in winter. That contradiction is the charm: conifer-like texture on a plant that is no conifer at all.
American basswood is one of the great shade and honey trees of eastern North America, a fast, stately deciduous tree with large, heart-shaped, softly toothed leaves and a broad, rounded, generous crown. Tilia americana has been cherished by Indigenous peoples, European settlers, and naturalists alike, and goes by a string of names: linden, bee tree, and lime, though the tree is no relation to the citrus lime. In late spring and early summer, hanging clusters of pale yellow, sweetly fragrant flowers open and hum with bees.
Hardiness
Zones 3–8
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
60–80 ft.
Spread
20–30 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
mental & emotional well-being, respiratory support, digestive health
'Madison' is the cold-hardy Confederate jasmine, the selection that carries the beloved evergreen vine a full zone north of where the tribe usually stops. Vigorous and twining, with glossy dark leaves and the powerfully fragrant, white, star-shaped flowers that make star jasmine famous, this form has proved hardy into USDA zone 7, well beyond the reach of the standard Trachelospermum jasminoides.
Some plants stand quietly in the garden, and some speak. Vitex agnus-castus has been speaking for more than two thousand years, from sun-washed Mediterranean shores to monastery cloisters, from the herbals of ancient Greece to the borders of Southern gardens. In Homer's day the fragrant leaves and lavender flower spikes were woven into ritual garlands. The Romans knew the shrub as the chaste tree, a name wrapped in legend, since the peppery seeds were once thought to cool passion, which earned the seeds the cloister nickname of monk's pepper. The double name says as much twice over: agnus is Latin for lamb and castus for chaste, while the genus Vitex comes from vieo, to weave, a nod to the pliant branches once bent into baskets.
A superior selection of the ancient chaste tree, chosen for the size and color of the bloom. Vitex agnus-castus 'Shoal Creek' is a deciduous large shrub or small tree, native in the species to southern Europe and western Asia and long grown across the South for a long season of summer flower. The palmate, aromatic leaves have now and then been mistaken for those of cannabis, a passing resemblance that gives the plant a certain conversational charm.
A tough, salt-defying seaside groundcover with a serious caveat. Vitex rotundifolia, best known as beach vitex, is a low, prostrate, trailing shrub of the mint family, native to the coasts of eastern Asia, the Pacific islands, and Australia, where the plant binds shifting sand along the shore. Rounded, blue-green leaves about two inches across clothe the running stems, aromatic and slightly spicy when crushed, and spikes of bright lavender-blue flowers open in late summer.
A brightly variegated cousin of the chaste tree, grown for foliage as much as flower. Vitex trifolia, sometimes called the three-leaf chaste tree or Arabian lilac, is a warm-climate shrub of the mint family, native along tropical and subtropical coasts from eastern Africa through southern Asia to Australia and the Pacific. The species name trifolia points to the leaves, usually held in threes, and the selection 'Variegata' edges each gray-green leaflet in creamy white for a cool, luminous effect.
The muscadine is the South's own grape, and 'Triumph' is one of the finest for the home garden. Vitis rotundifolia is a vigorous native vine of the southeastern United States, the first North American grape brought into cultivation, long grown for thick-skinned, intensely flavored fruit and the honeyed wines of Scuppernong fame. 'Triumph', a bronze-fruited selection, carries that heritage forward with unusual quality and ease.
A timeless favorite with a bright twist. Weigela florida 'Variegata' is a compact, deciduous shrub grown for two gifts at once: cream-edged, softly variegated foliage and a late-spring flood of deep rose-pink, trumpet-shaped flowers. The genus honors the German botanist Christian Ehrenfried Weigel, and the species florida, meaning flowering, ranges as a wild plant through northern China, Korea, and Japan.
There are few sights more stirring than a wisteria in bloom, and 'Amethyst Falls' offers all the romance without the unruly habits of the Asian cousins. This refined selection of the native American wisteria, Wisteria frutescens, pours out cascades of fragrant, lavender-violet blossoms in late spring, with smaller flushes through summer, a soft echo of springtime returning again and again.
For the first sixty-five years in the books, this vine was filed as a kind of soybean. Linnaeus named the plant Glycine frutescens in 1753, frutescens meaning turning shrubby, and there the classification sat until 1818, when Thomas Nuttall looked again, decided a woody climber of the southern riverbanks deserved a genus apart, and named the vine for his friend Caspar Wistar, the Philadelphia anatomist. Somewhere between the man and the plant a vowel slipped, Wistar becoming Wisteria, and the misspelling has outlived everyone involved.
The white form of the latest-blooming native. Wisteria macrostachya 'Clara Mack' is a twining, deciduous Kentucky wisteria with compound leaves and long, hanging clusters of pure white flowers, a splendid white version of a species normally blue. The racemes run longer and open later than those of the other native, Wisteria frutescens, extending the native wisteria season.
A brand-new intergeneric hybrid, and a small horticultural triumph. Dr. Tom Ranney of the North Carolina State University research station in Fletcher succeeded in crossing two icons of the Southern flora: the legendary Franklinia alatamaha, the lost Franklin tree that has not been seen in the wild since the early 1800s, with the native loblolly bay, Gordonia lasianthus. The result is xGordlinia grandiflora, a bigeneric cross that carries the best of both parents.
