Nerium oleander 'Hardy Red'

Oleander, Nerium oleander, is the great sun-loving evergreen of the Mediterranean, grown since antiquity for a long summer of bloom, with dark green, leathery, lance-shaped leaves in whorls of three along long, sparingly branched stems. 'Hardy Red' is one of the cold-tougher selections, carrying showy, lightly fragrant clusters of bright red flowers from late spring well into fall.

Few shrubs are so at home in heat and hardship. Oleander has graced Mediterranean gardens since Roman times, turns up in the wall paintings of Pompeii, and thrives on blazing sun, drought, lean soil, and salt spray. 'Hardy Red' carries that toughness a little colder than most: reliable through zone 8 and root-hardy toward zone 7 with shelter, where the top dies back in a hard winter and resprouts to bloom on new wood the same season, so the bright red show reaches gardens at the cold edge of oleander country.

One caution belongs in every oleander listing: all parts of the plant are poisonous, holding cardiac glycosides that are dangerous if eaten. The practical garden risk is low, since the intense bitterness keeps animals and people off, and as the old Woodlanders catalog has always put it, oleander is poisonous but not likely to be ingested except by beach goers who choose oleander sticks to cook wieners. The moral is simple: never grill on an oleander stick, and site the shrub away from where small children or livestock might nibble.

Give 'Hardy Red' full sun and well-drained soil and put the shrub to work as a fast informal hedge, a screen, a bold sunny-border anchor, or a large container on a hot terrace, where the hot red flowers blaze against the dark green foliage. Drought and salt are shrugged off, deer and rabbits leave the bitter leaves alone, and a hard late-winter prune keeps an old plant dense and full of bloom.