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.
Nuttall oak is named for Thomas Nuttall, the restless English-American naturalist who botanized the young United States more thoroughly than almost anyone of his generation. Long known as Quercus nuttallii, the tree now carries the name Quercus texana in most botanical usage, a change that has caused no end of confusion, since the name once belonged to a different oak. Whatever the label, this is a large deciduous red oak of the Southern bottomlands, at home in the floodplain forests of the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi valley.
The pink Cherokee rose is a big, vigorous, early-flowering climber grown for one glorious effect: large, single, silvery-pink flowers, up to four inches across, each a simple five-petaled saucer lit by a central boss of gold stamens. Where the true Cherokee rose blooms white, this one blooms in clear, soft pink, and opens early, in the first warm reach of spring, ahead of most roses.
Rubus irenaeus is a raspberry that has forgotten how to be a bramble. Rather than the arching, thorny canes of the fruiting kinds, the plant trails flat along the ground on downy, weakly prickled stems, laying down a dense evergreen carpet of large, rounded, coltsfoot-like leaves, each six inches or more across, dark and glossy above and felted pale brown beneath. Few groundcovers of any kind bring foliage this bold to deep shade.
Salix eriocephala, the heart-leaved or Missouri River willow, is a graceful native shrub, sometimes a modest multi-stemmed tree, of riverbanks and wet meadows across northern and eastern North America. The plant rises on several trunks clad in coarse gray bark, reaching roughly eight to a dozen feet in the garden and more in wild thickets, and the epithet eriocephala, meaning woolly-headed, points to the soft, silky catkins that give the willow much of its charm.
Salvia darcyi, the Galeana sage, is a bold Mexican sage grown for one of the purest scarlets in the whole tribe of salvias, a color that reads across a garden and pulls hummingbirds from a distance. Through the heat of summer and well into fall, upright spikes of large, bright orange-red flowers rise above a mound of soft, gray-green, heart-shaped leaves that release a clean minty scent when brushed. Few tender salvias give so long or so vivid a show.
'Cherry Queen' is a North Carolina-bred salvia from one of the most important salvia hybridizers America has produced. The cross is a deliberate one, between Salvia greggii, the autumn sage of the Texas and Mexican borderlands, prized for drought tolerance and a six-month bloom, and Salvia blepharophylla, a Mexican species whose name, eyelash-leaved sage, comes from the tiny fringe of hairs at the edge of each leaf (Greek blepharon, eyelash, and phylla, leaves). Blepharophylla carries the most saturated, signal-bright red flower in the whole genus, but the plant spreads by stolons in ways most gardeners do not want and resents cold winters, while greggii brings the bones and the durability. The breeder who put the two together was Dr. Richard "Rich" Dufresne of Candor, North Carolina, an organic chemist who became, more or less by accident, the leading American breeder of woody salvias for the eastern climate. Dufresne died in December 2018, leaving a body of work that includes 'Cherry Chief', 'Maraschino', and this selection, which Plant Delights Nursery called the most brilliant red they had ever seen on any hardy salvia.
Here is a salvia that wants what salvias are not supposed to want. Most of the genus comes from sunbaked Mediterranean hillsides, dry Mexican mountains, and dusty California chaparral, so that the very word Salvia is shorthand for full sun, gravelly soil, and a watering regime closer to neglect than care. Salvia koyamae, endemic to the cool wooded slopes of Honshu in Japan, breaks every rule, asking instead for shade, moist humus-rich woodland duff, and the cool morning light that filters through a deciduous canopy. This is, in short, the salvia to grow where hostas would otherwise go.
Salvia leucantha 'Midnight' is the all-purple form of the Mexican bush sage, and the difference is worth seeing. Where the common kind carries small white corollas against purple calyces, 'Midnight' drops the white altogether, so the long arching spikes read as pure, saturated purple from calyx to flower, a deeper and more solid color that carries even further across an autumn garden.
Salvia 'Anthony Parker' is a big, late-blooming hybrid sage with a charming South Carolina origin. The plant arose as a chance seedling in the Beaufort garden of the plantswoman Frances Parker, a cross between Salvia leucantha 'Midnight' and the pineapple sage Salvia elegans, and Frances rescued the young seedling from the path of the mower and named it for her grandson Anthony, then a year old, in 1994. From that lucky reprieve came one of the best late-season salvias for the South.
Salvia madrensis, the forsythia sage, is a big, robust perennial from the mountains of Mexico, grown for a late-season show of soft yellow. Broad, quilted, triangular leaves clothe stout, square, mint-family stems, and in fall the plant lifts terminal clusters of clear yellow flowers that recall a forsythia in bloom and give the sage its common name, an unusual color and a welcome one so late in the year.
Salvia mexicana, the big blue Mexican sage, is a tall, dramatic perennial grown for deep, saturated blue-violet flowers that arrive when the gardening year is winding down. The tubular blooms, set in contrasting calyces, are carried in long spikes above bold, heart-shaped leaves, and few plants bring so pure and deep a blue to the autumn garden.
Salvia microphylla 'Deltoid' is a shrubby form of the littleleaf or baby sage grown for warm salmon-coral flowers and neat, triangular, deltoid leaves. The small tubular blooms open over a long season and read as a soft coral against the fine, glossy foliage, a gentler tone than the hot scarlet of many littleleaf sages.
Salvia microphylla 'Hot Lips' is the famous temperature-shifting bicolor of the littleleaf sages, and the trick is worth the fame. In the cool of spring the flowers may open pure white or pure red, but as summer heat builds they turn strikingly two-tone, white below with a bold red lip, so that a single plant can carry white, red, and red-and-white flowers all at once. The show runs from late spring until frost.
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.
Peacock moss is not a moss at all but a very low, spreading fern relative, a spikemoss whose scale-like leaves clothe trailing stems that root as they run and knit into patches across moist, shaded ground. The great distinction of Selaginella uncinata is color: in good light the foliage takes on an iridescent, metallic blue-green sheen, the peacock shimmer that gives the plant a common name.
Senecio confusus, commonly known as the Mexican Flame Vine, hails from the warm, sun-soaked regions of Mexico and Central America. This vibrant climbing vine has been cherished for generations, not only for a striking appearance but also for resilience and versatility in various landscapes.
Palm grass earns the name at a glance. The broad, pleated blades of Setaria palmifolia fold and arch like the fronds of a young palm, bringing a lush, tropical boldness to a border that most grasses cannot match. This is a plant grown for presence and texture rather than flower, a bright green statement in beds, containers, and the wilder corners of a garden where form is welcome.
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
