{"title":"Woodlanders’ Florist \u0026 Flower Farmer Collection","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Florist and Flower Farmer collection gathers plants chosen with the cutting garden in mind: resilient, productive, and beautiful, selected as much for what they bring to an arrangement as to a border. Long stems, good vase life, interesting form and texture, and a long season of bloom are the qualities that earn a place here, alongside the sheer ornamental appeal that makes a flower worth growing in the first place.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the field and the garden these are hard-working plants. They give cut after cut through the season, offer the unusual textures, foliages, and seed heads that lift an arrangement beyond the ordinary, and keep producing when lesser plants have quit. Grown in rows for the market or woven into an ornamental border, they let a grower harvest beauty without stripping the garden bare.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe put this collection together for the growers who see a plant as both a flower and a crop, and because plants chosen for productivity and resilience are good for the wider garden too. Each has been picked for its ornamental value, its potential as a cut flower, and its ability to draw beneficial pollinators, so a cutting garden planted from this list is as alive and ecologically rich as it is productive.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrow them in good soil and full sun for the heaviest, longest-stemmed crops, and succession-plant for a continuous harvest. Reach into our \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/herbaceous-perennials\"\u003eHerbaceous Perennials\u003c\/a\u003e for long-blooming cut flowers, our \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/sun-lovers\"\u003eSun Lovers\u003c\/a\u003e for productive field plants, and our \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/grasses-and-bamboos\"\u003eGrasses and Bamboos\u003c\/a\u003e for the airy textures that finish a bouquet.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"agave-americana","title":"Agave americana","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe century plant is the great architectural agave, a broad rosette of thick, gray green, spine-tipped leaves that can spread six to eight feet across, each leaf edged with hooked teeth and ending in a hard dark spine. The form is bold and symmetrical, a piece of living sculpture for a hot, dry corner, and the silver cast of the foliage carries the planting through every season.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew plants have served people longer. Native to Mexico and the warm reaches of Texas, \u003cem\u003eAgave americana\u003c\/em\u003e is the maguey of Mesoamerica, the source of pulque, the milky fermented sap once drunk as a sacred and medicinal beverage, and of pita, the strong leaf fiber twisted into rope, net, and cloth across the pre-Columbian world. The flowers were eaten, and folk medicine turned the sap to use as a poultice and a digestive remedy. The common name century plant nods to the long wait for bloom: after years, often a decade or two, a single rosette throws up a flower stalk twenty feet or more, opens yellow flowers, sets seed, and then dies, leaving offsets to carry on.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive the century plant full sun and sharp drainage, a gravel garden, a hot bank, a raised bed, or a large container, and let the rosette stand as a focal point among other sun-and-drought lovers. Site away from paths and play areas, since the spines are formidable, and enjoy a planting that asks for almost nothing once established. Hardy in zones 8 to 10, evergreen, and as tough as any plant in the dry garden.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057807790195,"sku":"AGAV-AMER-01G","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/AgaveAmericana.jpg?v=1720139274"},{"product_id":"agave-lophantha-splendida","title":"Agave lophantha 'Splendida'","description":"\u003cp\u003eA small, bright green agave with a clean white stripe down the center of each short, broad, toothed leaf, \u003cem\u003eAgave lophantha\u003c\/em\u003e 'Splendida' is a compact, clumping selection of a species native to South Texas and Mexico. The variegated rosettes stay neat and low, a jewel-box agave for a trough, a container, or the front of a hot, sunny bed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe selection has a Woodlanders pedigree. This smaller, tighter clone was found some years ago near Jacksonville, Florida, by our friend Joe Levert of Augusta, Georgia, keeper of a remarkable collection of palms, citrus, and other subtropicals on the campus of Aquinas High School. Joe shared the plant with Ted Stephens of Nurseries Caroliniana, who named the agave 'Splendida' and is credited with the introduction.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike most agaves, 'Splendida' wants sun and sharp drainage, asking little once settled. The clumping habit makes for easy increase, and the white-striped rosettes look their best where the foliage can be read up close. The listed height is for the rosette; like all agaves, the flower stalk rises far taller, once, before that rosette gives way to a ring of offsets. Hardy to the upper single digits, a fine choice for a xeric bed, a rock garden, or a pot to move under cover in the coldest spells.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057807822963,"sku":"AGAV-LOPH-SPLE-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Agavelophantha.jpg?v=1720139789"},{"product_id":"ardisia-japonica-hinode","title":"Ardisia japonica 'Hinode'","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eArdisia japonica\u003c\/em\u003e 'Hinode' is a variegated form of the Japanese marlberry, each glossy, dark green leaf marked with a broad gold band down the center. Low and slowly spreading, this evergreen carpets shaded ground at eight to twelve inches, lit by the gold variegation and dotted in fall with bright red berries that hold into winter.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to the woodlands of Japan, China, and Korea, marlberry has long been grown in East Asian gardens and is, in its plain green form, one of the fifty fundamental herbs of traditional Chinese medicine, the whole plant used for coughs and chest complaints. 'Hinode' is grown for beauty rather than use, a refined, compact selection prized for the contrast of gold leaf and red fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlant the variegated marlberry as a slow evergreen groundcover or edger in shade to part shade, in moist, well-drained, slightly acidic soil, lovely along a shaded path, at the front of a woodland bed, or in a container. Even and steady moisture suits the foliage best, and the gold-banded leaves brighten a dim corner year round.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057811558515,"sku":"ARDI-JAPO-HINO-01G","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1079.jpg?v=1720136416"},{"product_id":"ardisia-crenata-alba","title":"Ardisia crenata 'Alba'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe uncommon white-berried form of coral ardisia, \u003cem\u003eArdisia crenata\u003c\/em\u003e 'Alba' is a small, neat evergreen shrub of glossy, scallop-edged dark green leaves, hung in fall and winter with clusters of round white berries in place of the usual coral red. The pale fruit and shining foliage give a long season of quiet interest, indoors in a bright room or out in a shaded, frost-free garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to eastern Asia, coral ardisia is freely seeded by birds, and in the warm, humid Southeast, from Florida to Texas, the species has spread well beyond gardens into natural woods. Site this ardisia where stray seedlings can be pulled, or grow the plant in a container, and gather fallen berries where self-sowing is a concern. In cooler zones the question is moot, since hard frost cuts the plant back.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn its native range, the root of coral ardisia has a place in traditional Chinese medicine. Grown here for the glossy evergreen leaves and the unusual white berries, this is a handsome small shrub for shade, a woodland bed, a shaded patio pot, or a winter-bright houseplant.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057811820659,"sku":"ARDI-CREN-ALBA-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Ardisiacrenata_Alba_OPG.png?v=1731872986"},{"product_id":"aspidistra-elatior-variegata","title":"Aspidistra elatior 'Variegata'","description":"\u003cp\u003eA boldly striped form of the cast iron plant, \u003cem\u003eAspidistra elatior\u003c\/em\u003e '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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA useful quirk: the white striping holds best on lean soil, so resist the urge to feed heavily, and the plant keeps the brightest variegation when grown a little hungry and somewhat root-bound. Native in parentage to China and Japan, slow and steady, with foliage that lasts for years before aging out.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrow variegated cast iron plant in shade to part shade, in well-drained soil, as a striking foliage accent, an evergreen groundcover under trees, or a container plant for a covered porch or a bright room indoors. The bold, architectural leaves bring structure and light to shaded plantings, and the variegation stays put rather than reverting to plain green.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057814016115,"sku":"ASPI-ELAT-VARI-01G","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/F122E6EB-29EC-40DF-A597-9BFE0B5A8CB3.jpg?v=1724700130"},{"product_id":"aspidistra-vientamensis-amanogawa","title":"Aspidistra vietnamensis 'Amanogawa'","description":"\u003cp\u003eA compact cast iron plant from Vietnam, \u003cem\u003eAspidistra vietnamensis\u003c\/em\u003e '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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike the rest of the clan, this is a tough, slow, evergreen survivor for difficult shade, holding form across the seasons and asking little. Drought tolerant once established, the plant settles happily into deep or part shade, in rich, well-drained soil, indoors or out, and shrugs off the low light and neglect that defeat most foliage plants.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUse 'Amanogawa' as a fine-textured, speckled evergreen accent or slow groundcover in shade to part shade, near a path or seating where the starry spots can be read at close range, or in a container for a porch or a bright room. Lovely woven among ferns, hostas, and other shade companions. Hardy in zones 7 to 10, and a houseplant in colder gardens.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057814179955,"sku":"ASPI-VIET-AMAN-01Q","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1272.jpg?v=1720136490"},{"product_id":"aster-oblongifolius-raydons-favorite","title":"Aster oblongifolius 'Raydon's Favorite'","description":"\u003cp\u003eAromatic aster is the toughest and most fragrant of the fall asters, and 'Raydon's Favorite' is the classic selection. \u003cem\u003eAster oblongifolius\u003c\/em\u003e '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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA selection prized for compact, sturdy growth and reliable late bloom, aromatic aster is a creature of dry, sunny, even lean and alkaline ground, shrugging off drought and heat where softer perennials sulk. Native across much of the central and eastern United States, the plant feeds bees and butterflies deep into autumn, long after most flowers have gone.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlant 'Raydon's Favorite' in full sun and well-drained soil, in a border, a dry prairie or meadow, a rock garden, or a low-water planting, where the blue fall haze pairs naturally with goldenrod and ornamental grasses. Deer-resistant and drought tolerant, with aromatic foliage that adds a second sense to the display. Shear in early summer for a tighter, more floriferous mound.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhotos courtesy of Mt. Cuba Center.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057814737011,"sku":"ASTE-OBLO-RAYD-FAVO-01Q","price":14.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Symphyotrichum_oblongifolium_Raydons_Favorite_1.jpg?v=1739309441"},{"product_id":"baptisia-australis","title":"Baptisia australis","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen Woodlanders began in 1980, this was about the only Baptisia known to gardeners; we went on to introduce many of the species that have since become popular garden perennials. \u003cem\u003eBaptisia australis\u003c\/em\u003e, blue wild indigo, is a long-lived native, essentially a prairie plant of open glades on limestone soil, with handsome olive-green compound leaves topped in spring by spikes of bright indigo-blue, pea-like flowers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNamed the Perennial Plant of the Year in 2010, blue wild indigo is as tough as a perennial comes: nitrogen-fixing, drought-tolerant, deer-resistant, and long-lived, growing a deep taproot that lets the plant shrug off heat and dry spells. The black seed pods that follow the flowers rattle into fall and add a second season of interest. Native to the eastern and midwestern United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlant blue wild indigo in a sunny, well-drained spot, in a border, a prairie or meadow planting, or a native garden, where the blue spring spires read against fresh green and the bold, shrubby clump holds its shape all season. Site once and leave undisturbed, since the deep root resents moving. Lovely with peonies, amsonia, and early grasses.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057816735859,"sku":"BAPT-AUST-01G","price":13.6,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-614.jpg?v=1720136585"},{"product_id":"baptisia-alba","title":"Baptisia alba","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBaptisia alba\u003c\/em\u003e, white wild indigo, is a striking native perennial of tall spires of white, pea-like flowers over deep blue-green foliage. Native to the eastern and central United States, the species carries a rich history as a dye plant, used by Native American peoples and early settlers as a substitute for true indigo, and the genus name, from the Greek bapto, to dip, records that role.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeyond the beauty, white wild indigo fixes nitrogen to enrich the soil and draws bees and butterflies to the spring flowers. Drought-tolerant, long-lived, and low in fuss, the plant grows a deep taproot that resents disturbance, so site once and let the plant settle in place. A piece of American garden history for a sunny border or a naturalized planting, with handsome black seed pods that rattle into fall.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoto courtesy of David Brenda.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057816965235,"sku":"BAPT-ALBA-01G","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Baptisia-alba-closeup_lg-DavidBrenda.jpg?v=1725495481"},{"product_id":"baptisia-sphaerocarpa","title":"Baptisia sphaerocarpa","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBaptisia sphaerocarpa\u003c\/em\u003e, yellow wild indigo, is the sunny member of the wild indigo clan, a tough, rounded native perennial topped in spring with short, dense spikes of clear bright yellow, pea-like flowers over fresh blue-green foliage. Compact and shrubby, the plant brings strong color and structure to a sunny border.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to the south-central United States, from Texas north through the prairies, yellow wild indigo is built for heat and lean, dry ground: nitrogen-fixing, drought-tolerant, deer-resistant, and long-lived, with a deep taproot that lets the plant shrug off drought once settled. Black seed pods follow the flowers and hold into fall.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlant yellow wild indigo in full sun and well-drained soil, in a border, a meadow or prairie planting, or a native and pollinator garden, where the gold spring spikes draw bees and butterflies and the bushy clump holds its shape all season. Site once and leave undisturbed, since the deep root resents moving. Lovely with the blue and white wild indigos and early grasses.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057816998003,"sku":"BAPT-SPHA-01G","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-619.jpg?v=1720136603"},{"product_id":"bignonia-capreolata-tangerine-beauty","title":"Bignonia capreolata 'Tangerine Beauty'","description":"\u003cp\u003eCrossvine is a high-climbing, semi-evergreen native vine, and 'Tangerine Beauty' is the famous tangerine-orange selection, opening a spring blaze of bright orange, trumpet-shaped flowers and blooming again, more lightly, through the season. Climbing high by tendrils and adhesive holdfasts, the crossvine shows to best effect on a fence, a wall, or a trellis in sun or part shade, where the early trumpets draw hummingbirds in numbers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCrossvine was virtually unavailable from nurseries when Woodlanders began offering the plant in the early 1980s. 'Tangerine Beauty' was introduced by Hines Nursery, quite possibly selected from stock supplied by Woodlanders, and is now widely grown, one of the most popular flowering vines for the South.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive 'Tangerine Beauty' a sturdy fence, wall, pergola, or large arbor and room to climb, where the spring flush of orange trumpets feeds hummingbirds and the semi-evergreen leaves screen year round. Like all crossvines, the plant suckers from the roots and can spread, so site where the roaming can be managed. Native to the southeastern United States: fast, tough, and reliable.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057818013811,"sku":"BIGN-CAPR-TANG-BEAU-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-809.jpg?v=1720136649"},{"product_id":"bignonia-capreolata-helen-fredel","title":"Bignonia capreolata 'Helen Fredel'","description":"\u003cp\u003eCrossvine is a high-climbing, semi-evergreen native vine with bright trumpet flowers, and 'Helen Fredel' is a large-flowered selection in red-orange with a yellow throat, a shade between the old varieties 'Atrosanguinea' and 'Tangerine Beauty'. Climbing high by tendrils and adhesive holdfasts, the crossvine flowers heavily in early summer and again, more lightly, later, and shows to best effect on a fence, an arbor, or a trellis in sun or part shade.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNow widely grown, crossvine was virtually unavailable from nurseries when Woodlanders began offering the plant in the early 1980s. 'Helen Fredel' comes from the garden of Helen Fredel in College Station, Texas, where the vine apparently grew first on an old two-story house in the neighborhood, and was shared with us by Greg Grant, who saw the larger flowers and good ornamental quality. A native vine with a real story behind it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive 'Helen Fredel' a sturdy support and room to climb, on a fence, a wall, a pergola, or a large arbor, where the early flush of trumpets draws hummingbirds. The crossvine suckers freely from the roots and can spread into nearby beds, so site where the roaming can be managed, or grow against a wall away from open ground. Native to the southeastern United States.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057818046579,"sku":"BIGN-CAPR-HELE-FRED-01G","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-2063.jpg?v=1720136652"},{"product_id":"bignonia-anisostichus-capreolata-var-atrosanguinea","title":"Bignonia capreolata var. atrosanguinea","description":"\u003cp\u003eCrossvine is a vigorous, semi-evergreen native climber that ascends by tendrils and adhesive holdfasts, and var. \u003cem\u003eatrosanguinea\u003c\/em\u003e is the red one: where the typical crossvine flowers orange, this striking selection, introduced by Woodlanders, carries abundant deep red to red-purple trumpets, often over narrower, longer leaves. The flowers even smell faintly of mocha on a warm day.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA fine vine for a wall, a fence, or a trellis in sun or part shade, where the red spring trumpets draw hummingbirds in numbers. Like all crossvines, this red form suckers from the roots and can spread in beds, and is best planted on an isolated support where the roaming can be managed. Native to the southeastern United States, fast and tough once established.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057818144883,"sku":"BIGN-CAPR-VAR-ATRO-01G","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-807.jpg?v=1720136655"},{"product_id":"calycanthus-floridus","title":"Calycanthus floridus","description":"\u003cp\u003eSome plants are loved for how they look. \u003cem\u003eCalycanthus floridus\u003c\/em\u003e is loved for how they smell, which is a different and older kind of attachment. The flowers are strange and handsome in their own right, an inch or two across, dark maroon going toward burgundy, built from many narrow strap-like segments with no clear line between petal and sepal, somewhere between a small magnolia and something from the bottom of the sea. But the reason this shrub has been passed down through Southern gardens for three centuries is what happens when the flowers open on a warm day: a deep fruit-bowl perfume, strawberry and pineapple and ripe banana, that drifts well beyond the plant.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere is the honest catch, and it is the whole reason provenance matters with this one. The fragrance is gloriously inconsistent. Grown from seed, the scent varies wildly plant to plant, some intoxicating, some barely there, which is why old garden wisdom says to smell before you buy and why the good forms have always been passed hand to hand rather than left to chance. The leaves and bark carry their own spice when bruised, so even between bloom and a fragrance you can rely on, there is something to crush between your fingers on the walk past.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe history runs deep. Calycanthus came into cultivation in 1726 and never left; Jefferson planted nineteen of them at Monticello in 1778, recording them under the country name \"bubby flower,\" and the shrub has carried a small constellation of names ever since, Carolina allspice, sweet Betsy, sweet bubby, strawberry-bush. The flowers were once tucked into the top drawer of a dresser to scent the linens, which tells you most of what you need to know about how people have felt about them. This is an heirloom in the truest sense, a plant kept alive by being wanted.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey make a dense, rounded shrub of six to nine feet, suckering gently into a colony over time, and they are as easygoing as they are old-fashioned: untroubled by pests, indifferent to soil, happy from full sun into real shade. There is a tradeoff worth knowing. In full sun they flower and scent most heavily but spread more freely; in shade they grow slower and stay more contained. Either way the foliage turns clean gold in fall and the curious urn-shaped pods hang on into winter. Native to the woodlands of the Southeast, \u003cem\u003eCalycanthus floridus\u003c\/em\u003e asks for almost nothing and gives back a fragrance you will cross the yard for.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Bare Root (~2')","offer_id":42820149018739,"sku":"CALY-FLOR-BARE","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"1 Gallon","offer_id":42820149051507,"sku":"CALY-FLOR-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/CalycanthusfloridusWoodlanders1MBG.jpg?v=1738787407"},{"product_id":"cephalanthus-occidentalis","title":"Cephalanthus occidentalis","description":"\u003cp\u003eButtonbush is a rounded, deciduous native shrub, easily trained as a small multi-stemmed tree, grown for the curious globe-shaped flowers that give the plant its name. From early summer into fall, creamy-white pincushion balls about an inch across stud the branches, each a sphere of tiny tubular flowers with projecting styles that lend a fireworks effect, intensely fragrant and alive with bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA plant of wet places in the wild, buttonbush thrives along pond edges, in rain gardens, ditches, and seasonally flooded ground, and tolerates standing water that defeats most shrubs, yet takes an ordinary garden bed in stride given sun and steady moisture. The rounded seed heads that follow the flowers persist into winter and feed waterfowl and other birds, a second season of interest after the bloom. Widely native across North America, buttonbush is one of the great pollinator and wetland-wildlife shrubs, and a handsome, easy choice for the damp, sunny corners of a garden.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057829908595,"sku":"CEPH-OCCI-01G","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/CephalanthusoccidentalisSAWWoodlanders.jpg?v=1739843006"},{"product_id":"ceratostigma-willmottianum","title":"Ceratostigma willmottianum","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCeratostigma willmottianum\u003c\/em\u003e, the Chinese plumbago, is a small deciduous subshrub grown for one of the truest blues in the garden. From midsummer into autumn the wiry, bristly-leaved stems carry clusters of intense cobalt-blue flowers, each a slim reddish-purple tube opening to five pale-blue lobes, and as the season cools the foliage turns a rich red and bronze, so that blue flower and crimson leaf often share the plant at once.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe species hails from western China and bears the name of Ellen Ann Willmott (1860 to 1934), the formidable English plantswoman whose garden at Warley Place ran to thousands of species and whose name is scattered through the plant world. Easy and long-blooming, the Chinese plumbago wants a sunny or lightly shaded spot, well-drained soil, and good air movement, and dies back in cold winters to return from the base, blooming on new growth. A jewel for the front of a border, a low wall, or a gravel garden.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057830203507,"sku":"CERA-WILL-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-318.jpg?v=1720137122"},{"product_id":"chionanthus-virginicus","title":"Chionanthus virginicus","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe native fringetree is one of the great small trees of the southern spring. \u003cem\u003eChionanthus virginicus\u003c\/em\u003e, a deciduous large shrub or small tree, often multi-stemmed, hangs the whole canopy with fleecy, drooping panicles of narrow white petals in spring, soft as torn paper and lightly fragrant, a look that earned the old country names old man's beard and grancy graybeard. On female plants the flowers give way to clusters of raisin-sized, deep blue-purple fruits that birds take quickly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWoodlanders grows the southern form, which some botanists have called \u003cem\u003eChionanthus henryi\u003c\/em\u003e, with leaves that are narrower, more glossy, and of heavier texture than those of the northern form, a handsomer plant in leaf as well as in flower. The fringetree carries a long American history beyond the garden as well: Native peoples and later settlers used a tea of the root bark to wash wounds and sores, and nineteenth-century Eclectic physicians prized the dried root bark, which they called Chionanthus, as a bitter tonic for the liver and gallbladder.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, the fringetree is an easy, adaptable, four-season ornamental, grown in sun or light shade in good, well-drained soil. Use the tree as a specimen near a path, a patio, or a window where the spring fleece and light fragrance can be enjoyed close up, and give a darker backdrop to set off the white. Underplant with shade-tolerant natives, and pair with dogwoods and native azaleas that share the spring season. A female plant set near a male will fruit for the birds.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057833742451,"sku":"CHIO-VIRG-01G","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/6364A441-4F65-4324-85CC-9EF222279E9E.jpg?v=1783641863"},{"product_id":"clytostoma-callistegioides","title":"Clytostoma callistegioides","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eClytostoma callistegioides\u003c\/em\u003e is one of those vines that feels as though the plant wandered out of an old botanical expedition: vigorous, evergreen, and brimming with the sort of charm collectors once crossed oceans to find. A close relative of our native crossvine (\u003cem\u003eBignonia capreolata\u003c\/em\u003e), this South American cousin shares the same athletic climbing spirit but dresses in glossier, more refined foliage and carries larger flowers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThose flowers are long, fluted trumpets in a soft violet-purple, some reaching five inches, opening in spring like a quiet fanfare over the vine. Early plant explorers in Argentina and southern Brazil noted the habit of draping over thickets and climbing the warm, wooded edges, where the lavender bloom lit up the understory after summer rains. The genus \u003cem\u003eClytostoma\u003c\/em\u003e (now often folded into \u003cem\u003eBignonia\u003c\/em\u003e) enjoyed a moment of admiration among nineteenth-century horticulturists, who prized exotic trumpet vines for bold flowers and an easy disposition.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eClimbing by tendrils, this violet trumpet vine is a natural for an arbor, a fence, a pergola, or the sun-washed corner of a garden wall. In warm climates the plant is remarkably carefree, evergreen and steady and generous with bloom, and the spring flowers draw butterflies and hummingbirds. In a prolonged dry spell a little extra water is welcome, a nod to those rain-nourished subtropical origins.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHardy in Zone 9 and worth a thoughtful trial in sheltered pockets of Zone 8, \u003cem\u003eClytostoma callistegioides\u003c\/em\u003e rewards gardeners who enjoy plants with a sense of place and history: handsome, free-flowering, and just unusual enough to spark curiosity, exactly the kind of plant Woodlanders has always championed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhoto courtesy of Yasuko and Suzanne.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057845538931,"sku":"CLYT-CALL-01G","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Clytostomacallistegioides2.png?v=1722701133"},{"product_id":"coreopsis-verticillata","title":"Coreopsis verticillata","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCoreopsis verticillata\u003c\/em\u003e, the threadleaf coreopsis, is a clump-forming native perennial dressed in fine, thread-like foliage and covered through the long weeks of summer in small, bright yellow, daisy-like flowers. Native to the open woods and clearings of the eastern United States, threadleaf coreopsis has become one of the most popular of all garden perennials, an easy, airy, long-blooming plant for the sunny border.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe needle-fine leaves give the whole clump a soft, ferny texture that reads well against bolder foliage, and the flowers keep coming for months, especially where the spent blooms are sheared away. Give threadleaf coreopsis full sun and well-drained soil, and the plant will spread gently by root into a dependable, drought-tolerant colony.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSite threadleaf coreopsis in a sunny border, a meadow or prairie planting, a pollinator garden, or a dry, naturalized bank, where the yellow haze can drift among grasses, salvias, and other sun lovers. Bees and butterflies work the flowers all summer, and deer tend to pass the fine foliage by.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057847079027,"sku":"CORE-VERT-01G","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-632.jpg?v=1720137619"},{"product_id":"cryptomeria-japonica","title":"Cryptomeria japonica","description":"\u003cp\u003eJapanese cedar is a tall, pyramidal to conical evergreen conifer, and the great timber tree of Japan, where the sugi soars past a hundred feet and lines temple avenues and mountain forests alike. The blue-green needles are held close and awl-shaped, taking on a bronzy, purple-bronze cast through cold winters before recovering their color in spring. The reddish-brown bark peels in long fibrous strips down a straight, buttressed trunk.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, Japanese cedar makes a stately evergreen specimen or a tall screen, best given an open site with deep, permeable, acidic soil and room for the broad, columnar form to develop. Plant the sugi where the winter bronzing and the handsome bark can be read at close range, and give a deep soaking through dry spells while the tree establishes. Native to Japan, long revered there, and a graceful presence in any large Southern garden.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057854287987,"sku":"CRYP-JAPO-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Cryptomeri_japonica__6iDNUYDyRbud.jpg?v=1736722502"},{"product_id":"decumaria-barbara","title":"Decumaria barbara","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDecumaria barbara\u003c\/em\u003e, the native woodvamp or wild climbing hydrangea, is a self-clinging woody vine of the southeastern United States, grown for glossy foliage and flat, creamy-white flower clusters that echo those of the true hydrangeas in early summer. In the wild the vine belongs to wet bottomland forests and swamp margins, and also climbs in the rich, moist coves of the southern Appalachians, hauling itself up tree trunks on hairy aerial rootlets, the holdfasts that let the plant grip bark, brick, or stone without any support at all.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe botany holds a couple of quiet surprises. Woodvamp sits in the hydrangea family, and modern taxonomists have gone so far as to fold the plant into \u003cem\u003eHydrangea\u003c\/em\u003e itself, so the family resemblance in those lacecap flower heads is no accident. The genus name comes from the Latin for ten, a reference to flower parts often set in tens, and the whole small genus contains only two species: this southeastern American climber and a single counterpart, \u003cem\u003eDecumaria sinensis\u003c\/em\u003e, in central China, one of those elegant plant disjunctions that link the woodlands of the American Southeast to those of East Asia across the width of the globe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn flower the vine is understated and lovely, carrying flat, rounded clusters of small, fragrant, creamy-white blooms in early summer, followed by small urn-shaped seed capsules, with the glossy, dark green foliage turning soft yellow before dropping in fall. Woodvamp climbs more flatly and behaves more politely than most self-clinging vines, which makes the plant a welcome native alternative to the imported climbing hydrangea.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive woodvamp a vertical surface to grip: a shaded masonry wall, a sturdy fence, a stone pillar, or the trunk of a mature tree, where the bloom stays low enough to enjoy rather than vanishing into a high canopy. The holdfasts do the work, so no ties or trellis are needed. Handsome against brick or stone in a courtyard, woodvamp suits native plant gardens, shaded courtyards, and woodland edges, underplanted at the base with ferns, hostas, and other shade lovers, and asks for full sun to semi-shade in moist, well-drained soil.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057859235955,"sku":"DECU-BARB-01G","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Decumariabarbara.png?v=1722789137"},{"product_id":"dianella-tasmanica-variegata","title":"Dianella tasmanica variegata","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDianella tasmanica\u003c\/em\u003e 'Variegata' is a strappy evergreen perennial grown above all for foliage: arching, sword-shaped leaves boldly striped in white and green that stay dense and upright through the season and lend crisp, year-round structure to a bed. In spring and early summer, airy panicles of small, star-shaped, blue to violet flowers rise on wiry stems above the leaves, followed by glossy, deep blue berries that gleam against the pale striping, an unusual and long-lasting ornamental touch that gives the plant a second season of interest.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe species is Australian, native to the cool forests and clearings of the southeast, including Tasmania, which supplies both the epithet and one of the common names, Tasman flax lily. The genus name is a small tribute to Diana, the Roman goddess of the woodlands, with a diminutive ending, so Dianella reads as little Diana. Flax lily nods to the strong, fibrous leaves rather than to any true kinship with flax, and the plant sits, botanically, near the day lilies in the asphodel family.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThose tough leaves carry a long human history in Australia. Aboriginal people split and twisted the fibrous foliage into strong string and cord and wove the strap-like leaves into baskets and mats, and used the deep blue berries as a source of dye to color the leaves of other weaving plants. In the wild the glossy berries feed birds, which carry and scatter the seed. The variegated selection trades some of that vigor for a brighter presence in the garden, the white striping catching light in a way the plain green species does not.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, use the variegated flax lily for cool, upright structure in a border, a mixed container, a mass planting, or the front of a shaded bed, where the white-striped blades brighten dark corners and contrast with broad-leaved companions. Full sun to partial shade suits the plant, with part shade keeping the variegation brightest in hot climates, and well-drained soil is really the only firm requirement. The blue berries stretch the display well past bloom, and the flax lily reads well beside heuchera, hosta, ferns, and dark-leaved shrubs, or as a low, evergreen edging in mild-winter gardens.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057859629171,"sku":"DIAN-TASM-VARI-01G","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DianellatasmanicavariegataWoodlanders3.jpg?v=1730254776"},{"product_id":"dichroa-febrifuga","title":"Dichroa febrifuga","description":"\u003cp\u003eFew garden shrubs carry a resume like \u003cem\u003eDichroa febrifuga\u003c\/em\u003e. In the ground this is a handsome, medium evergreen with lacecap heads of small blue flowers in late spring and, better still, clusters of berries in fall that ripen to an almost unreal iridescent, metallic blue, the kind of structural color usually reserved for beetles and tropical birds. A relatively recent introduction from China, the plant sits close enough to \u003cem\u003eHydrangea\u003c\/em\u003e, in the family Hydrangeaceae, that the same trick applies: acidic soil deepens the flowers and fruit to true blue, while alkaline ground pushes them toward pink.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBoth halves of the botanical name reward a moment of attention. \u003cem\u003eDichroa\u003c\/em\u003e comes from the Greek for two-colored, a nod to those shifting blues and pinks, while the epithet \u003cem\u003efebrifuga\u003c\/em\u003e is plain Latin for fever-dispelling, and that second word opens onto two thousand years of history. In China the plant is chang shan, named for Mount Chang, and ranks among the fifty fundamental herbs of traditional medicine. The roots appear in the Shennong Bencao Jing, the oldest surviving Chinese materia medica, and again in Zhang Zhongjing's Han-dynasty Treatise on Cold Damage, prescribed above all against the recurring fevers of malaria.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe modern chapter is just as remarkable. In the twentieth century, chemists chasing the herb's power isolated the alkaloids febrifugine and isofebrifugine, and those molecules in turn inspired a synthetic derivative, halofuginone, that has since traveled far from the fever clinic, serving as an anticoccidial in poultry feed and as a research compound studied for fibrosis, cancer, and autoimmune disease. The tradition came with a hard catch that modern study confirmed, since chang shan is strongly emetic and toxic to the liver in more than small amounts, which is exactly why the plant belongs in the garden as an ornamental while the pharmacology belongs in the laboratory. Nothing here is medical advice.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSet against that heritage, the garden role is refreshingly simple. Grow \u003cem\u003eDichroa febrifuga\u003c\/em\u003e as a lush, shade-loving shrub for a woodland border, a shaded courtyard, or a mixed planting where the metallic fall berries can be admired at close range, and keep the soil acidic for the deepest blue. The plant is handsome with hydrangeas, ferns, hostas, and aucuba, takes happily to a large container that can shelter under cover at the cold edge of the range, and asks only for moist, well-drained soil in morning sun or dappled shade.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoto courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.botanic.cam.ac.uk\/the-garden\/plant-list\/dichroa-febrifuga\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eCambridge Botanic Garden\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057860120691,"sku":"DICH-FEBR-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Dichroa-febrifuga-19980761-A-2-scaled.jpg?v=1722789808"},{"product_id":"dichroa-versicolor","title":"Dichroa versicolor","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe genus name comes from the Greek \u003cem\u003edichroos\u003c\/em\u003e, meaning \"two-colored,\" and \u003cem\u003eDichroa versicolor\u003c\/em\u003e presses the idea further: bloom color shifts with soil chemistry much the way a hydrangea does, swinging from deep cobalt to soft mauve depending on how much aluminum a plant can draw up. The species epithet \u003cem\u003eversicolor\u003c\/em\u003e only doubles down on the point, promising a shrub that refuses to settle on a single shade.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBotanically this is the close cousin of the more familiar \u003cem\u003eDichroa febrifuga\u003c\/em\u003e, but built on a grander scale, with leaves three to four times larger and lacecap-like corymbs that can stretch nearly a foot across. Think of the plant as an evergreen hydrangea analog for the gardener who has run out of shade-garden ideas: glossy, deep green leaves the size of a hand, held on dark stems that read almost lacquered in winter light. The species climbs the high, cool mountains of Taiwan, which is part of why these shrubs hold up better in southeastern gardens than a tropical reputation might suggest. Woodlanders' stock traces to a seed exchange between Scott McMahan at the Atlanta Botanical Garden and a high-elevation Taiwanese collection, a provenance that shows in the surprising cold tolerance.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe genus carries a heavier cultural weight through that famous cousin: \u003cem\u003eDichroa febrifuga\u003c\/em\u003e is the Chinese quinine of traditional medicine, one of the classic fever herbs of the old pharmacopoeia. \u003cem\u003eDichroa versicolor\u003c\/em\u003e is grown instead for pure ornament, and in Hong Kong and parts of southern China the shrub has long done double duty as a garden plant and an informal hedge. We have found the same to be true here, whether the shrub is looped along a shaded path or settled in beside taller camellias where the arching stems can borrow a little structure.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, give \u003cem\u003eDichroa versicolor\u003c\/em\u003e a spot in morning sun or dappled shade where the outsized blooms and, in a good year, the iridescent metallic berries can be read at close range. Acidic, aluminum-rich soil deepens the blue of both flower and fruit, while sweeter ground pushes the same plant toward lavender and pink. Pair the shrub with hydrangeas, ferns, hostas, and aucuba for a lush, shade-loving grouping, and plant a second clone nearby to coax the fullest set of those turquoise-to-near-black berries. A plant for the collector who already owns the hydrangeas and is ready for something quieter and stranger.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057860218995,"sku":"DICH-VERS-01G","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DichroaversicolorAucklandBG.jpg?v=1777489221"},{"product_id":"dryopteris-erythrosora","title":"Dryopteris erythrosora","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe autumn fern, \u003cem\u003eDryopteris erythrosora\u003c\/em\u003e, earns the common name backward: the new fronds arrive in spring the color of turning leaves, a warm copper-orange that seems borrowed from October. As those fronds age they deepen through pink and bronze and finally settle into glossy dark green, so the plant carries a hint of autumn even at the height of the growing season.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA member of the wood-fern family, Dryopteridaceae, the species grows wild in the woodlands of China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, where the fronds rise from humus-rich, evenly moist forest floors. The botanical name tells a second story hidden on the undersides of mature fronds: \u003cem\u003eerythrosora\u003c\/em\u003e means \"red sori,\" for the bright red spore cases that stud the leaf backs in late summer and fall, an ornamental detail most gardeners discover by accident and then hunt for every year.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLong a favorite of shade gardeners, the autumn fern carries the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit, recognition of steady, dependable performance rather than fussy brilliance. The arching, triangular fronds are semi-evergreen, holding through mild winters to give the shade garden structure at the leanest time of year, then refreshing with a new copper flush as the weather warms.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, plant \u003cem\u003eDryopteris erythrosora\u003c\/em\u003e in dappled to full shade with steady moisture: a woodland border, the north side of the house, a shaded path edge, or the front of a bed beneath trees. Set the ferns in drifts so the spring copper reads as a mass, and pair with hellebores, hostas, hydrangeas, and other shade companions. Photo courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/hardyferns.org\/ferns\/dryopteris-erythrosora\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eHardy Fern Foundation\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057862938739,"sku":"DRYO-ERYT-01G","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/2-Dryopteris-erythrosa-WA-Carhart-RAS-6-2012-3-2-47.jpg?v=1722792767"},{"product_id":"eriobotrya-japonica","title":"Eriobotrya japonica","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe loquat, \u003cem\u003eEriobotrya japonica\u003c\/em\u003e, is a handsome broadleaved evergreen of the rose family, kin to apples, pears, and hawthorns, grown for the bold foliage and the early, unusual fruit. Native to the warm-temperate hills of central China and cultivated in Japan for more than a thousand years, the loquat has traveled with settlers throughout the mild-winter world, from the Mediterranean to the American South, where old dooryard trees are a familiar sight. The large, leathery leaves, deeply veined and toothed along the edges, give the tree a lush, almost tropical presence year round.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe loquat keeps an upside-down calendar. Where most fruit trees bloom in spring, the loquat opens clusters of small, fragrant, cream-white flowers in late fall and early winter, filling cold air with a soft, sweet scent and feeding bees when little else is in flower. From those winter blooms come the fruits: small, oval, yellow to orange, with sweet-tart, honeyed flesh around a few large brown seeds, ripening in spring, months ahead of any other tree fruit. Whether a given year sets a heavy crop depends entirely on winter cold, since a hard freeze at or after flowering will take the blossoms and the fruit with them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the landscape the loquat pulls double duty as ornament and orchard. Left to grow, the tree makes a rounded, densely leafy small tree or large shrub, fifteen feet or more, excellent as an evergreen screen, a patio shade tree, or a bold-textured specimen against a wall. The fruit is best fresh off the branch but also makes fine jelly, jam, and preserves, and the trees carry a heavy crop where winters are kind. Give the loquat room, since the broad canopy and big leaves want space to look their best.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLoquats are easy in the right climate. Hardy in USDA zones 7 through 10, the tree wants full sun to part shade and fertile, well-drained soil, tolerates a range of ground so long as drainage is good, and shrugs off heat once established, though young trees and open flowers need protection from hard frost. Beyond the kitchen, loquat leaves have a long life in traditional Chinese and Japanese medicine, where they are known as pipa ye and brewed against coughs and chest complaints, an old use that modern research on the leaf's triterpenes continues to explore. Few small trees give so much: evergreen structure, winter fragrance, spring fruit, and a deep well of history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057865887859,"sku":"ERIO-JAPO-01G","price":18.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Eriobotrya_japonica__aNRTzyMHyegH.jpg?v=1743436212"},{"product_id":"fagus-grandifolia","title":"Fagus grandifolia","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe American beech is one of the great presences of the eastern woods, a large, slow-growing deciduous tree that ranges through rich forests from southern Canada to the Gulf. Toothed oval leaves, several inches long, emerge a clean bright green, turn clear yellow in fall and then a warm russet-brown, and cling to the branches through much of winter, a habit called marcescence that gives the bare woods a soft papery whisper. The trunk is the signature: smooth, silver-gray, and elephantine, so inviting that generations have carved their initials into the living bark, a temptation best resisted since the wounds never truly heal.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe genus name Fagus reaches back through Latin to a Greek root meaning to eat, a nod to the nourishing mast the tree has always offered, while grandifolia simply means large-leaved. The English word beech shares deep linguistic roots with book, for early Germanic peoples are said to have scratched their runes onto tablets of smooth beechwood, so that the tree and the written word grew up together in the northern imagination.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe triangular beechnuts that ripen in fall are sweet and genuinely good to eat, relished by turkey, deer, bear, and squirrel, though so small and fiddly to shell that few people trouble to gather them. Native peoples made far fuller use of the tree. The Iroquois valued leaf and bark as a blood cleanser and an astringent tonic for wet conditions of the lungs, dressed burns and scalds with boiled leaves, and worked beechnut oil with bear grease into a repellent against mosquitoes; the Cherokee chewed the nuts to expel worms, and the Rappahannock steeped a bark tonic to ease the itch of poison ivy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden the American beech is a tree for the long view and the large property, a magnificent shade and specimen tree that asks for room, fertile ground, and patience. The dense canopy and shallow, greedy roots cast a shade so deep that little will grow beneath, so plan to underplant only at the outer dripline with the toughest woodland companions, autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora) or the arching Selaginella braunii, and leave the ground under the crown to fallen leaves. Give moist but well-drained soil and time, and the tree becomes, over decades, the silver-limbed anchor of a woodland. Do not hope to grow much of anything in the dense shade of a mature beech.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057869525107,"sku":"FAGU-GRAN-01G","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-70.jpg?v=1720138118"},{"product_id":"gardenia-sp-variegata","title":"Gardenia sp. 'Variegata'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis striking, rather upright gardenia is a Woodlanders introduction that has since become more widely available, grown less for bloom than for the boldly marked leaves. Each glossy leaf is splashed and margined in strong yellow, so the whole shrub reads as a soft fountain of gold and green, a rare thing among broadleaf evergreens and a bright note for a shaded corner.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plant came to us many years ago from Brookside Gardens in Maryland, who had found the variegated form in Japan, and has proven a durable, good-natured grower. Single white flowers appear now and then, carrying the familiar gardenia sweetness, but bloom is sparse and beside the point; the foliage is the reason to grow this one, holding color and polish the year round.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGardenia jasminoides comes from the warm woodlands of China and Japan, long cultivated for fragrance, dye, and medicine, and the variegated form asks for the same easy conditions as any gardenia: acid, well-drained soil, steady moisture, and shelter from hard frost. This selection has proven hardy here to at least 11 degrees F, and takes happily to a cool greenhouse where winters are colder.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUse the variegated gardenia where the gold-marked leaves can light a dim spot: the front of a shaded border, a foundation bed, a large container, or a conservatory. Give a little shade to keep the pale variegation from scorching in fierce sun, and pair with dark-leaved companions that throw the gold forward. Grown for foliage first, this is an evergreen that earns a place every month of the year.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057873096819,"sku":"GARD-VARI-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Gardeniasp._Variegata__Woodlanders3.jpg?v=1724250375"},{"product_id":"gelsemium-sempervirens-hardy-margarita","title":"Gelsemium sempervirens (hardy) ‘Margarita’","description":"\u003cp\u003eCarolina jessamine is the state flower of South Carolina and one of the most beloved evergreen vines of the South, prized for the wash of fragrant yellow trumpets that opens the gardening year. 'Margarita' is the cold-hardy answer to that beauty, a selection that carries the same sweet-scented gold well north of where the species usually gives out.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNamed by Gene Cline, a true native-plant pioneer, from a plant found in northern Georgia, 'Margarita' has proven hardy and grown well as far north as Washington, DC, holding evergreen where ordinary Carolina jessamine would sulk or freeze. The bright yellow, trumpet-shaped flowers are fragrant and generous, opening in late winter and early spring with a scattering of repeat bloom in fall.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeyond the extra cold nerve, this is the familiar jessamine in every good way: a well-mannered twining vine, evergreen, tolerant of a range of soils and sites, and happiest in a sunny spot with little competition. The glossy foliage gives structure the year round, and the vine climbs a fence, a trellis, a post, or an arbor with an easy, non-clinging grace.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive 'Margarita' full sun to part shade and ordinary, well-drained soil, and the plant asks little once established. One honest caution belongs with the fragrance: like all jessamines, every part of Gelsemium sempervirens is poisonous if eaten, so site the vine away from where small children or pets might be tempted by the flowers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057874243699,"sku":"GELS-SEMP-HARD-MARG-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-821.jpg?v=1720138286"},{"product_id":"helianthus-angustifolius","title":"Helianthus angustifolius","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe name does the plant no favors. \"Swamp sunflower\" conjures boggy ground and standing water, which is where you find the plant in the wild, yes, but not where you need to plant this sunflower in the garden. \u003cem\u003eHelianthus angustifolius\u003c\/em\u003e tolerates wet soils in nature because wet soils are where the plant manages to grow without being outcompeted. Given good sun and average garden moisture, the sunflower performs considerably better and needs no drainage problem to justify a place. The name is a provenance note, not a planting instruction.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat the plant actually is: one of the best late-season natives available to Southern and mid-Atlantic gardeners, blooming from October through November at the precise moment when the rest of the border has exhausted itself. The flowers are classic sunflower in form, two to three inches across, with clear yellow rays surrounding a deep purplish-brown disc, the color combination that looks as if it were designed for October specifically, which in a biological sense it was. On a mature plant in full flower, the display is not subtle. Stems reach six to eight feet and branch freely in the upper third, so a well-sited colony becomes a mass of yellow that carries from across the garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe ecological credentials are worth knowing. The bloom period overlaps directly with the monarch migration, and the nectar is relied upon by southbound butterflies refueling along the Eastern Flyway. The plant is also a larval host for several checkerspot and painted lady species. The seeds that follow are small but oil-rich, and songbirds, quail, and mourning doves work through the spent flower heads all winter. Leaving the stems standing until late winter costs nothing and returns something measurable to the local food web.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eHelianthus angustifolius\u003c\/em\u003e spreads by rhizome to form colonies over time, which is either useful or something to manage depending on what you want from the planting. Either way, a colony in October is worth the conversation.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057880305779,"sku":"HELI-ANGU-01G","price":12.8,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1833.jpg?v=1720138459"},{"product_id":"hydrangea-arborescens-annabelle","title":"Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Annabelle' is a wild American shrub with a hometown. Around 1910 two sisters, Harriet and Amy Kirkpatrick, spotted an unusually full-flowered smooth hydrangea in the woods of Union County, Illinois, dug the plant, and grew it in their garden in the town of Anna. For half a century the shrub passed hand to hand around southern Illinois as a nameless local treasure, until the University of Illinois plantsman Dr. Joseph C. McDaniel traced the trail back to Anna in the 1960s, selected the plant, and released it for sale in 1962. The name 'Annabelle' honors both the town and the Kirkpatrick belles who found the shrub: Anna plus belle.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBehind the cultivar stands Hydrangea arborescens, the smooth hydrangea native to woodland slopes and streambanks across the eastern United States. 'Annabelle' is simply the most famous garden selection of that native, a deciduous shrub of three to five feet, wider than tall, that opens enormous rounded heads of creamy white sterile florets, snowballs the size of a dinner plate, in early summer. The heads age softly to green and can be cut for drying. Michael Dirr, the dean of American woody-plant horticulture, remembered McDaniel as a true plantsman and gentleman, and 'Annabelle' remains the shrub's quiet monument.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe species carries a deep ethnobotanical history under an older name, Seven-bark, so called for the way the stems peel in successive layers of color. Cherokee, Creek, and other southeastern peoples used the root and root bark as a diuretic and a remedy for kidney and bladder stones, a tradition later taken up by the Eclectic physicians of the nineteenth century, and the plant earned the folk name kidney-bush along the way. The leaves and buds, by contrast, contain cyanide-releasing compounds and are not for eating, a reminder that this is a plant with a serious past rather than a garnish.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, 'Annabelle' is generous and forgiving. Because the shrub flowers on new wood, a hard late-winter cut to a foot or so returns bigger blooms without any risk to the show, making this one of the most reliable hydrangeas for cold gardens where old-wood types freeze out. Give the plant good soil that stays moist, a little afternoon shade in hot regions, and room to spread into a low colony. The white heads light up a shady border, a foundation planting, or the edge of a woodland, and the strongest stems hold the flowers up after summer rain.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057885417587,"sku":"HYDR-ARBO-ANNA-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-380.jpg?v=1720138645"},{"product_id":"hydrangea-macrophylla-all-summer-beauty","title":"Hydrangea macrophylla ‘All Summer Beauty’","description":"\u003cp\u003e'All Summer Beauty' answers the oldest complaint about mophead hydrangeas: that a single hard freeze or an eager pruner can wipe out a whole season of bloom. Where classic bigleaf hydrangeas flower only on old wood, this compact selection, three to four feet high and wide, blooms on both old and new growth, so the rounded heads keep coming through the season and return even after a winter that kills the older stems. The name is a promise the plant generally keeps.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHydrangea macrophylla, the bigleaf or French hydrangea, came to Western gardens from Japan and remains the hydrangea most people picture: glossy, serrated leaves and dense mophead clusters of sterile florets. 'All Summer Beauty' carries the family's famous party trick, flowers that read the soil. In acid ground the blooms turn clear blue, in alkaline ground they shift to pink, and the color can be nudged either way by adding sulfur for blue or garden lime for pink. Few garden plants wear their soil chemistry so openly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe species has a quiet ceremonial life in Japan, where a closely allied sweet-leaved hydrangea furnishes amacha, a sweet tea brewed from fermented leaves and poured over statues of the Buddha each spring to mark his birthday. The ornamental mopheads are not that tea plant, and hydrangea leaves in general contain cyanide-releasing compounds and should not be eaten, but the association gives the genus a gentle place in the culture of its homeland beyond mere decoration.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, 'All Summer Beauty' suits the smaller border, the foundation planting, and the large container, and the bigleaf clan's noted tolerance of salt air makes the shrub a fixture of seaside gardens. Give the plant morning sun and afternoon shade in hot regions, steady moisture, and shelter from drying wind. Deadheading spent globes encourages a fresh flush, and a mass of the blue or pink heads reads beautifully against a dark wall, a hedge, or the green of a shaded bed.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057885712499,"sku":"HYDR-MACR-ALL-SUMM-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-381.jpg?v=1720138658"},{"product_id":"hydrangea-x-preziosa-pink-beauty","title":"Hydrangea x 'Preziosa'","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Preziosa' is a small, jewel-like hydrangea with a tangled pedigree and an unusual gift. Raised in Germany from the nursery tradition of Georg Arends and introduced around 1961, the shrub is a hybrid of Hydrangea serrata and Hydrangea macrophylla, and catalogs list the plant under all three names depending on which parent they favor. Whatever the label, 'Preziosa' behaves like a compact mophead, three to four feet high and wide, built for a smaller garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe flowers are the reason to grow this shrub. Small, rounded mophead clusters of sterile florets open pale and cream, then move through pink to cherry-red and finally to a deep wine-red as summer turns to fall. Unlike the familiar bigleaf hydrangeas, whose color answers the soil, 'Preziosa' runs through this progression more or less regardless of pH, so the multicolored effect turns up in almost any garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plant is well dressed even between color changes. The serrate leaves emerge flushed with purple, mature to green, and return to red and purple tints in fall, and the whole shrub is carried on dark maroon stems that set off the shifting flower color. 'Preziosa' also brings better winter hardiness than many mopheads, reliable to zone 5, which widens the range where a color-changing hydrangea can be grown.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCompact size makes 'Preziosa' easy to place: a small shaded border, a foundation planting, a large container, or the front of a mixed bed where the changing heads can be watched week to week. Give the plant rich, evenly moist, well-drained soil in part shade, with full sun allowed only where the soil stays reliably moist. A little afternoon shade in hot regions keeps the flowers and the dark stems at their best.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057885745267,"sku":"HYDR-PREZ-PINK-BEAU-01G","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-391.jpg?v=1720138662"},{"product_id":"hydrangea-quercifolia-alice","title":"Hydrangea quercifolia 'Alice'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe oakleaf hydrangea is the great four-season native shrub of the American Southeast, and 'Alice' is one of the grandest selections of the species. Hydrangea quercifolia grows wild in the rich woods and ravines of a small range centered on Alabama and Mississippi, where the naturalist William Bartram found the shrub in the 1770s and called it singular and beautiful. Alabama later made the oakleaf hydrangea the official state wildflower, a rare honor for a plant that earns attention in every season.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Alice' came from the University of Georgia campus, selected by Michael Dirr, the most influential woody-plant horticulturist of his generation. The result is a very large shrub, ten to twelve feet high and as wide, that carries some of the longest flower panicles of any oakleaf, white cones ten to fourteen inches long that open in early summer, age to soft rose, and dry to warm tan on the branch. Few native shrubs give so much scale and presence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe name quercifolia means oak-leaved, and the big, deeply lobed leaves are the plant's other signature, dark green through summer and turning deep burgundy-red, purple, and bronze in fall, holding that color for weeks. When the leaves finally drop, 'Alice' reveals cinnamon bark that peels in papery sheets, so the shrub stays handsome straight through winter. Flowers, foliage, and bark give four distinct seasons of interest from a single plant.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive 'Alice' room to become the large, rounded specimen the shrub wants to be, at the corner of a house, along a woodland edge, or as the anchor of a shaded shrub border. Fertile, moist, well-drained soil suits the plant best, in shade or half shade, or even full sun where mulch and water keep the roots cool. The fertile flowers within the panicles draw bees and butterflies, and the whole shrub reads beautifully against evergreens or a wall that shows off the white summer cones and the burgundy of fall.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057886105715,"sku":"HYDR-QUER-ALIC-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-387.jpg?v=1720138671"},{"product_id":"hydrangea-quercifolia-harmony","title":"Hydrangea quercifolia 'Harmony'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe oakleaf hydrangea is the great four-season native shrub of the American Southeast, a large deciduous plant with oak-like leaves, white summer panicles, and peeling cinnamon bark. Hydrangea quercifolia grows wild in the rich woods of a small range centered on Alabama, where the naturalist William Bartram admired the shrub in the 1770s, and where the oakleaf is now the official state wildflower. 'Harmony' is one of the boldest selections the species has produced.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Harmony' carries one of the better origin stories in the oakleaf world. The shrub was discovered in a church cemetery near Rainbow City, Alabama, by the father of the plantsman Joe McDaniel, and later introduced to the trade by Eddie Aldridge and his father. What makes 'Harmony' unmistakable is the flower: enormous, dense heads of sterile florets, packed up to a foot long, so heavy they arch the branches under their own weight.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThose massive heads divide opinion. 'Harmony' has both ardent admirers, who love the sheer abundance, and detractors who find the heavy, solid cones a little too much of a good thing. Either way the shrub delivers the rest of the oakleaf package: big, deeply lobed leaves that turn burgundy and bronze in fall, and cinnamon bark that peels away for winter interest once the leaves drop.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSite 'Harmony' where the weighty white heads can be seen and where the arching branches have room, at a woodland edge, in a large shaded border, or against a green backdrop that sets off the white. Fertile, moist, well-drained soil in shade or part shade suits the shrub, or full sun with mulch and steady water. Prune only just after flowering, since the plant sets the coming year's buds on old wood.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057886204019,"sku":"HYDR-QUER-HARM-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/HydrangeaquercufoliaHarmonyWoodlanders-4.jpg?v=1750639500"},{"product_id":"hydrangea-quercifolia-alison","title":"Hydrangea quercifolia 'Alison'","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Alison' is a sister selection to the famous 'Alice,' both drawn from the same native species by the same discerning eye. Hydrangea quercifolia, the oakleaf hydrangea, grows wild in the rich woods of a small Southeastern range centered on Alabama, where the naturalist William Bartram admired the shrub in the 1770s and where the oakleaf now serves as Alabama's official state wildflower. Of all the native shrubs of the region, few offer so much across so many seasons.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMichael Dirr selected 'Alison' on the University of Georgia campus, alongside 'Alice,' and the two make an instructive pair. Where 'Alice' grows tall and grand, 'Alison' spreads broader and more horizontal, a large shrub with long white panicles held over wide, arching branches. The flowers open white in early summer, blush to rose as they age, and the plant finishes the year in excellent burgundy-red fall color.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe deeply lobed, oak-like leaves that give the species its name turn deep red, purple, and bronze in autumn and hang on for weeks, and when they drop the peeling cinnamon bark keeps the winter shrub interesting. 'Alison' offers the full oakleaf sequence, white cones in summer, burning foliage in fall, and exfoliating bark in winter, on a frame built more for breadth than height.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe spreading habit makes 'Alison' a natural for covering ground along a woodland edge, softening the base of a wall, or filling a broad, half-shaded bed where the arching branches can reach out. Give the shrub fertile, moist, well-drained soil in shade or part shade, or full sun with mulch and water, and let the fertile flowers feed bees and butterflies through summer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhotos courtesy of Dr. Michael Dirr.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057887154291,"sku":"HYDR-QUER-ALIS-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/hydrangeaquercifoliaalisonflowernca.jpg?v=1724266925"},{"product_id":"ilex-serrata-x-verticellata-apollo","title":"Ilex serrata x verticellata 'Apollo'","description":"\u003cp\u003eIlex 'Apollo' has one job in the garden, and does it superbly: pollination. A vigorous hybrid deciduous holly from the U.S. National Arboretum, crossing the Japanese winterberry, Ilex serrata, with the native American winterberry, Ilex verticillata, 'Apollo' was bred and released specifically as the male partner for the celebrated female 'Sparkleberry', and stands in equally well for 'Winter Red'.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWinterberries carry male and female flowers on separate plants, and a female sets fruit only when a male blooms alongside it, so choosing a pollinizer that flowers at the right time is the whole trick. 'Apollo' blooms late, in step with the late-flowering females, and a single male will service a group of them planted within range. Without that partner the showiest female winterberry stands bare all winter; with it, the branches fill with fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot that 'Apollo' is a plain thing to hide. The hybrid vigor shows in strong, upright growth to ten or twelve feet, new leaves flushed burgundy-red before they settle to green, and a clean yellow turn in fall before the leaves drop. The name winterberry belongs really to the females and their fruit, but 'Apollo' earns a place as a full, leafy backdrop through the growing season.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSet 'Apollo' where a pollinizer is needed but not necessarily seen: the back of a border, a hedgerow, a damp thicket, or a wildlife planting, within about fifty feet of the female winterberries meant to fruit. Give the roots the moist to wet, acidic soil the whole clan loves, in full sun to part shade. One 'Apollo' quietly lights a whole stand of 'Sparkleberry' and 'Winter Red' with berries for the winter.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057895542899,"sku":"ILEX-SERR-VERT-APOL-01G","price":18.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1990.jpg?v=1720138905"},{"product_id":"iris-tectorum-blue","title":"Iris tectorum (blue)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe horticulturist Scott Ogden, in \u003cem\u003eGarden Bulbs for the South\u003c\/em\u003e, sets the scene: the Japanese roof iris, \u003cem\u003eIris tectorum\u003c\/em\u003e, is famous in the native country as a flower for planting on sod roofs, just as houseleeks are used on the cottage roofs of France. In gardens the silky green fans of leaves form large patches, a fine subject for the foreground of a shady border, and in April the ruffled, orchid-like blooms appear among the handsome leaves. This is the common form, in which the flowers open a rich mottled blue, veined and freckled toward the center, with white crests.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe common name and the Latin \u003cem\u003etectorum\u003c\/em\u003e, meaning of roofs, both come from a genuine and rather poignant piece of history. \u003cem\u003eIris tectorum\u003c\/em\u003e is native to China, where the species has been grown since at least the seventh century, and reached Japan long ago. During a period of famine and war, so the story goes, an imperial decree reserved all arable land for food crops and made growing flowers on the ground illegal, so Japanese households moved the iris up onto the thatched ridgelines of their roofs, where the plant grew and bloomed out of reach of the law.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe roofs were not only a hiding place. The real value lay underground, in the thick, thumb-sized rhizomes, ground into a fine white powder used as a face cosmetic, the pale makeup of the geisha among the uses, and worked into hair dye and corn plasters besides. In China the same rhizome carries a long medicinal history under the name chuan she gan, taken in traditional practice as a decoction to soothe sore throat, ease cough, and clear what the old texts call heat. Modern laboratories have since studied the flavonoids and other compounds the rhizome holds, though the tradition ran centuries ahead of the chemistry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the garden the roof iris is grown for foliage as much as flower. Set the broad, ribbed, silky green fans at the foreground of a shaded border, along a path, or at the top of a low wall where the fans can spill, and let the mottled blue, white-crested blooms open among the leaves in mid to late spring. Pair with ferns, hostas, and other shade companions in fertile, well-drained soil, give a little afternoon shade where summers are fierce, and divide every few years to keep the clump flowering. Deer tend to leave the fans alone.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057899442291,"sku":"IRIS-TECT-BLUE-01G","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-674.jpg?v=1720139020"},{"product_id":"iris-tectorum-album","title":"Iris tectorum 'Album'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe horticulturist Scott Ogden, in \u003cem\u003eGarden Bulbs for the South\u003c\/em\u003e, sets the scene: the Japanese roof iris, \u003cem\u003eIris tectorum\u003c\/em\u003e, is famous in the native country as a flower for planting on sod roofs, just as houseleeks are used on the cottage roofs of France. In gardens the silky green fans of leaves form large patches, a fine subject for the foreground of a shady border, and in April the ruffled, orchid-like blooms appear among the handsome leaves. In the common form these are a rich mottled blue with white crests; even lovelier, Ogden adds, are the white, yellow-crested blooms of the form offered here.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe common name and the Latin \u003cem\u003etectorum\u003c\/em\u003e, meaning of roofs, both come from a genuine and rather poignant piece of history. \u003cem\u003eIris tectorum\u003c\/em\u003e is native to China, where the species has been grown since at least the seventh century, and reached Japan long ago. During a period of famine and war, so the story goes, an imperial decree reserved all arable land for food crops and made growing flowers on the ground illegal, so Japanese households moved the iris up onto the thatched ridgelines of their roofs, where the plant grew and bloomed out of reach of the law.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe roofs were not only a hiding place. The real prize lay underground, in the thick, thumb-sized rhizomes, which were ground into a fine white powder used as a face cosmetic, the pale makeup of the geisha among the uses, and worked into hair dye and corn plasters besides. In China the same rhizome has a long medicinal life under the name chuan she gan, taken in traditional practice as a decoction to soothe a sore throat, ease cough, and clear what the old texts call heat. Modern laboratories have since taken an interest in the flavonoids and other compounds the rhizome holds, though the tradition, as ever, ran centuries ahead of the chemistry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the garden the white roof iris earns a place for foliage as much as flower. Set the broad, ribbed, pale green fans at the foreground of a shaded border, along a path, or at the top of a low wall where the fans can spill, and let the clean white, yellow-crested blooms light a shady corner in mid to late spring. Pair with ferns, hostas, and other shade companions in fertile, well-drained soil, give a little afternoon shade where summers are fierce, and lift and divide every few years to keep the clump flowering. Deer tend to leave the fans alone.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057899573363,"sku":"IRIS-TECT-ALBU-01G","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1600.jpg?v=1720139026"},{"product_id":"iris-cristata","title":"Iris cristata","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIris cristata\u003c\/em\u003e is the iris scaled down for the woodland floor, a dwarf native barely six inches high that spreads into low, overlapping fans of bright green blades. In mid to late spring the mats light up with small flowers, an inch and a half to two inches across, in soft lavender-blue to violet, each fall stamped with a white patch and a raised orange or yellow ridge. That ridge is the crest that gives the plant both the Latin name \u003cem\u003ecristata\u003c\/em\u003e, crested, and the common name crested iris, and the feature sets the species apart from the bearded and beardless irises alike.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe dwarf crested iris is a plant of the eastern woods, ranging from Maryland west to Oklahoma and south to Georgia and Mississippi, where the species threads through rich soil on shaded ravine slopes and wooded bluffs. Gardeners have carried the plant into cultivation for well over a century as one of the most obliging of native spring wildflowers, content to knit a shaded corner together where showier things sulk. The rhizomes creep along at or just below the surface, branching as they go, so a few starts widen season by season into a slow, well-behaved groundcover.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSmall as the flowers are, they are built for company: the crest and pale signal patch act as a landing guide for the early bees that pollinate them, and the plant closes the spring flush before the woodland canopy fully leafs out. Like other irises the rhizome carries the family's mild toxicity and is better admired than sampled, which is part of why deer and rabbits tend to leave the fans alone. After bloom the foliage often goes quietly summer-dormant in dry shade, returning the following spring, so the crested iris asks for a season's patience and gives decades of return.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the garden \u003cem\u003eIris cristata\u003c\/em\u003e is a natural for the front of a shaded bed, the edge of a woodland path, a shaded rock garden, or the dappled ground beneath deciduous trees, wherever the soil is rich, humusy, and evenly moist but never soggy, since the plant resents wet feet. Massed as a groundcover the low fans and spring flowers make a fine carpet, and single clumps tuck neatly among ferns, foamflower, wild ginger, and other woodland companions. Give part to full shade, a top-dressing of leaf mold, and shelter from harsh afternoon sun, and let a colony broaden at a natural pace. Photo courtesy of Steven Faucette.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057899704435,"sku":"IRIS-CRIS-01G","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Iriscristata-StevenFaucette.jpg?v=1725496645"},{"product_id":"iris-brevicaulis","title":"Iris brevicaulis","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIris brevicaulis\u003c\/em\u003e is the low, quiet member of a famous clan. One of the five wild species known collectively as the Louisiana irises, the plant carries broad blue to violet flowers on curiously kinked, zigzagging stems, so short that the blooms rarely clear the fan of sword-shaped leaves. Botanists call that back-and-forth habit fractiflex, and the trait gives the plant one of the common names, zigzag iris; the Latin \u003cem\u003ebrevicaulis\u003c\/em\u003e, short-stemmed, records the same feature, while a third name, Lamance iris, honors the American horticulturist Lora La Mance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe species ranges widely for a wetland plant, from the north shore of Lake Erie in Ontario down through the Mississippi basin to the Gulf, following river bottoms and damp meadows. That broad, hardy distribution made \u003cem\u003eIris brevicaulis\u003c\/em\u003e one of the cornerstones of Louisiana iris breeding. The five species interbreed freely with one another and with nothing else, and one of the earliest deliberate crosses, W. R. Dykes's 'Fulvala', paired this iris with the coppery \u003cem\u003eIris fulva\u003c\/em\u003e. From that small beginning came the whole race of Louisiana iris hybrids grown around the world today, so a gardener who plants the zigzag iris is holding a piece of that living pedigree.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor all the horticultural importance, \u003cem\u003eIris brevicaulis\u003c\/em\u003e keeps a wildflower's modesty. The blooms open in late spring and early summer, two to three inches across, in shades from clear blue to violet and now and then white, each fall marked with a paler signal that guides visiting bees to the nectar. Like most irises the rhizomes are best left uneaten, since the family is mildly toxic, a quiet chemical defense that also helps explain why deer and rabbits tend to pass the fans by. The zigzag stems, sometimes lying along the ground before turning up at the tips, lend cut stems and garden clumps alike an informal, faintly architectural line.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the garden the plant belongs wherever the ground stays reliably moist: the margin of a pond, the low end of a border, a rain garden, or a bog bed, in full sun to part shade. Massed, the short habit reads as a dense, grassy groundlayer studded with blue, and a drift naturalizes slowly into a handsome colony over the years. Pair the zigzag iris with other moisture lovers such as Louisiana iris hybrids, swamp milkweed, and native sedges, and give a little afternoon shade where summers turn fierce. Little else is needed once the clump settles, beyond dividing every few years to keep the rhizomes vigorous.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057899769971,"sku":"IRIS-BREV-01G","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-663.jpg?v=1720139033"},{"product_id":"iris-sanguinea","title":"Iris sanguinea","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere is a small lie in the name. Sanguinea means blood, and yet the iris in front of you is blue, or blue running toward violet, with only a wine-dark deepening in the falls to argue the case. The botanists felt the strain too: Carl Thunberg first tried to file the plant as \u003cem\u003eIris orientalis\u003c\/em\u003e in 1794, found that name already taken, and the species waited until 1813 for the one carried since. The Japanese never bothered with Latin. To them the flower is ayame, one of the three irises of early summer, threaded through a thousand years of poetry and arriving in that uncertain seam where the old poets could never quite agree whether spring had ended or summer begun.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTell the species from the familiar Siberian iris by the stems: \u003cem\u003esanguinea\u003c\/em\u003e carries the flowers on a single unbranched stalk, \u003cem\u003esibirica\u003c\/em\u003e branches. The two run so close that most of the garden Siberians you can buy are crosses between them, and close enough that taxonomists keep threatening to fold one wholly into the other. Either way you get narrow gray-green blades, slim and upright, and reddish-purple flowers held just above the foliage in late spring.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA plant of wet Asian meadows, wanting sun or a little shade and ground that stays damp, the blood iris repays a pond edge or a low moist border by thickening, season on season, into a generous clump. Blue with a rumor of blood, and worth growing for the argument alone.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057899835507,"sku":"IRIS-SANG-01Q","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-672.jpg?v=1720139036"},{"product_id":"iris-verna","title":"Iris verna","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eIris verna\u003c\/em\u003e is one of those plants that feels like a secret, small, fragrant, and impossibly charming once noticed. Native to the pinewoods and sandy slopes of the eastern United States, this understated iris has been a spring companion for centuries, brightening forest floors long before gardeners thought to give the plant a place at home.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnlike the showy bearded irises that swept Victorian horticulture, \u003cem\u003eIris verna\u003c\/em\u003e stayed close to the woodland: low-growing, with narrow, grasslike foliage and violet-blue flowers, each fall brushed with a bright orange-gold signal, that open in early spring while winter still lingers in the air. The bloom carries a soft, sweet fragrance, the kind early wildflower enthusiasts wrote about with the affection reserved for plants that reward careful, unhurried attention.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBotanists noted a preference for sandy, acidic ground as early as the 1700s, when naturalists in the Carolinas and Georgia catalogued this delicate iris blooming in the sunlit openings of longleaf pine forests. The compact habit and quiet beauty made the dwarf violet iris a favorite among early native-plant gardeners in the mid-twentieth century, long before the broader gardening world came round to the value of regional species.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday \u003cem\u003eIris verna\u003c\/em\u003e remains a gem for anyone who loves spring ephemerals and plants with a clear sense of place. Plant the dwarf violet iris where the soil drains sharply, along pathways, in an open woodland garden, or among other Southeastern natives that relish lean, sandy conditions, and the blossoms will appear like little lanterns of color at the very moment the garden begins to wake. Give part shade and acidic ground, let the grassy foliage rest through summer, and expect a slow, well-mannered spread.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGraceful, fragrant, and deeply rooted in the botanical heritage of the South, \u003cem\u003eIris verna\u003c\/em\u003e is a reminder that some of the most meaningful plants are also the most modest. A true Woodlanders kind of beauty. Photo courtesy of Bob Gutowski.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057900130419,"sku":"IRIS-VERN-01Q","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Irisverna-Bob_Gutowski.png?v=1724084598"},{"product_id":"iris-fulva","title":"Iris fulva","description":"\u003cp\u003eAmong the wild irises of North America, \u003cem\u003eIris fulva\u003c\/em\u003e is the one that broke the color rules. Where the family runs to blues, purples, and yellows, the copper iris opens in warm coppery red to burnt orange, a shade no other native iris offers, carried on slender stems in late spring and early summer with a soft, slightly drooping poise. The Latin \u003cem\u003efulva\u003c\/em\u003e, meaning tawny or reddish-brown, records that unusual color, and the common names, copper iris and red iris, say the same thing more plainly.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst described in the early nineteenth century, \u003cem\u003eIris fulva\u003c\/em\u003e belongs to the small group of five species known as the Louisiana irises, native to the swamps, ditches, and floodplains of the Deep South and the lower Mississippi valley, from Louisiana north to southeastern Missouri and southern Illinois. That singular red pigment made the copper iris invaluable to plant breeders, since crossing the species into the other Louisiana irises is how red and copper first entered the modern hybrids. One of the earliest such crosses, W. R. Dykes's 'Fulvala', paired the copper iris with the blue \u003cem\u003eIris brevicaulis\u003c\/em\u003e and helped launch the whole hybrid race.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe color is not for show alone. Unlike most irises, which court bees, \u003cem\u003eIris fulva\u003c\/em\u003e is pollinated chiefly by hummingbirds, and the ruby-throated hummingbird works the red flowers for nectar as the blooms open in early summer. That partnership ties the plant to the seasonal rhythm of the southern wetlands, where the copper iris grows in ground that floods and recedes with the year. Those same wetlands are now much reduced by drainage and development, so the wild populations have thinned, and growing a nursery-raised plant is a small way of keeping a diminishing native in cultivation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the garden the copper iris asks for the wet feet most perennials refuse, thriving at a pond or stream edge, in a rain garden, in a bog bed, or in any sunny to lightly shaded border kept reliably moist, and taking even standing water in stride. The two to three foot stems rise well above the fans of sword-shaped leaves, so the coppery flowers read from a distance and draw hummingbirds close. Pair the plant with other moisture lovers such as Louisiana iris hybrids, swamp hibiscus, canna, and native sedges, mass a few for the fullest effect, and divide the rhizomes every few years to keep a colony vigorous.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057900228723,"sku":"IRIS-FULV-01G","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Irisfulva-RW_Smith.jpg?v=1724024591"},{"product_id":"iris-japonica","title":"Iris japonica","description":"\u003cp\u003eA small crested iris with the carriage of an orchid and a quietly extraordinary biography. \u003cem\u003eIris japonica\u003c\/em\u003e was named by Carl Peter Thunberg in 1794. Thunberg was a protege of Linnaeus and one of the only Western botanists allowed into Japan during the country's closed period, from 1775 to 1778, so much of what he brought back is, in a real sense, the first documented record of Japanese flora in Western science. The species had already reached Europe two years earlier, carried out of China by Thomas Evans of the East India Company in 1792. By the 1820s Pierre-Joseph Redoute, the same artist whose rose paintings turn up on every aunt's tea tray, was painting the plant under the older name \u003cem\u003eIris fimbriata\u003c\/em\u003e in his \u003cem\u003eChoix des plus belles Fleurs\u003c\/em\u003e. A treasure of cultivated gardens for more than two centuries.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe flower is the surprise. Held flat against a slender branched stem, the bloom opens in pale lavender-blue with a yellow-orange crest down the center of each fall and a fringed, almost lacy margin along every petal,\u003c\/strong\u003e the source of both the Latin epithet \u003cem\u003efimbriata\u003c\/em\u003e, fringed, and one of the English common names. In bloom the plant reads less like a typical iris and more like a small pale orchid hovering above the foliage. The Chinese call the flower \u003cem\u003eHudie Hua\u003c\/em\u003e, butterfly flower, which is the right word.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat also sets the species apart is the way of spreading. Rather than clumping, \u003cem\u003eIris japonica\u003c\/em\u003e sends out long thin stolons that root at intervals, building a slow, loose carpet of evergreen sword-shaped fans. Most of the populations in cultivation in Japan and beyond are triploid and seed-sterile, meaning every garden plant of the species today is a clone of clones, propagated vegetatively for centuries and passed along human routes, no exaggeration to say the plant has traveled with people from monastery gardens to imperial courts to East India Company holds to Aiken, South Carolina.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExcellent in dappled shade under a high deciduous canopy, along woodland edges, or as a refined groundcover in a shaded courtyard. Pair the shaga iris with hostas, ferns, \u003cem\u003eOphiopogon\u003c\/em\u003e, and the smaller hellebores for a layered late-winter and early-spring scene. Drought tolerant once established, and deer and rabbits leave the fans alone. For the gardener who finds the standard purple bearded iris a touch too midcentury-suburb, here is something with the nuance of a botanical illustration.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057900392563,"sku":"IRIS-JAPO-01Q","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-2068.jpg?v=1720139049"},{"product_id":"kalmia-latifolia","title":"Kalmia latifolia","description":"\u003cp\u003eMountain laurel is the aristocrat of the American heath family (Ericaceae), a broadleaf evergreen native from southern Maine to the Florida panhandle and west toward Indiana and Louisiana, most at home on the acid, rocky slopes of the Appalachians. Linnaeus named the genus Kalmia for his student Pehr Kalm, the Finnish-Swedish naturalist who botanized the eastern colonies in the 1740s, and the species epithet latifolia means broad-leaved. To gardeners the shrub answers to a whole drawer of common names: calico bush for the patterned flowers, spoonwood for the wood, and simply mountain laurel across most of the range.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn late spring and early summer, mountain laurel covers a dense, rounded, glossy-leaved frame with rounded clusters of cup-shaped flowers, white to soft pink and freckled with deeper rose inside. The buds are the real showpiece, crimped and fluted like tiny cake decorations before they open. Each flower carries the family's signature mechanism: ten stamens bent back into small pockets in the corolla and held under spring tension, ready to snap forward and dust a visiting bee the instant the bloom is jostled. A mature plant, with reddish, sinuous bark and leathery leaves, holds structure through all four seasons.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe common name spoonwood records how deeply people once relied on this shrub. The hard, close-grained wood was carved into spoons and small utensils by Indigenous peoples of the East and later turned for tool handles, bowls, wreaths, and even the gearing of early wooden clocks. That usefulness came with a sharp warning, though. Every green part of mountain laurel, along with the pollen and any honey made from the flowers, contains grayanotoxins, and the foliage has poisoned livestock, wildlife, and people alike. For that reason the shrub is grown strictly as an ornamental and wildlife plant, never a medicinal or edible one, and the leaves are best kept well away from grazing animals and curious mouths.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, mountain laurel is the backbone broadleaf evergreen for acid, woodland soil. Give the shrub the dappled light of a high pine or oak canopy, plant high rather than deep so the shallow roots never drown, and mulch with pine straw to keep the root run cool and sour. Mountain laurel settles beautifully among rhododendrons, blueberries, inkberry, and native ferns, and the toxic foliage doubles as reliable deer resistance where browsing pressure runs high. Slow to build but long-lived and quietly magnificent once established, this is a shrub to plant for decades rather than seasons.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057905635443,"sku":"KALM-LATI-01G","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/IMG_4820.jpg?v=1775586914"},{"product_id":"kalmia-latifolia-x-hirsuta","title":"Kalmia latifolia x hirsuta","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis seemingly unlikely hybrid crosses the familiar mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) with the diminutive, far less known sandhill laurel (Kalmia hirsuta) of the Deep South, two species that could hardly look more different. The cross was probably first made by the late, great Alabama nurseryman Tom Dodd, Jr., and further investigated by the Connecticut Kalmia expert Dr. Richard Jaynes, whose lifetime of work did more than anyone's to bring the genus into gardens.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe genus Kalmia was named by Linnaeus for his student Pehr Kalm, the naturalist who explored eastern North America in the 1740s. This hybrid sits neatly between the parents in both size and hardiness, staying a compact three to four feet high and wide, and bears the typical pink flower clusters of a mountain laurel. Each cup-shaped bloom carries the family's signature mechanism, ten stamens held under spring tension in pockets of the corolla, ready to snap forward and dust a visiting bee with pollen. The sandhill laurel parent lends heat tolerance and a smaller frame, making this an intriguing laurel for gardeners in the warmer Southeast.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMountain laurels carry a long human history under the common name spoonwood, from the hard, close-grained wood that Indigenous peoples of the East carved into spoons and small utensils. That heritage comes with a firm caution. Every green part of a Kalmia, along with the pollen and any honey made from the flowers, contains grayanotoxins and is poisonous to livestock, wildlife, and people. This hybrid is grown as an ornamental and pollinator plant, never a medicinal or edible one, and the foliage is best kept away from grazing animals and curious mouths.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, this compact laurel is an attractive and unusual choice for a spot with well-drained acid soil, semi-shade, and dependable moisture. The modest size suits a woodland border, a foundation planting, or a collector's corner among rhododendrons, blueberries, inkberry, and native ferns. Plant high rather than deep, mulch with pine straw to keep the roots cool and sour, and let the toxic evergreen foliage serve as quiet deer resistance through the year.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057906225267,"sku":"KALM-LATI-X-HIRS-01G","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1818.jpg?v=1720139197"},{"product_id":"kalmia-latifolia-willowwood","title":"Kalmia latifolia 'Willowwood'","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Willowwood' is a Woodlanders introduction selected from a mountain laurel found growing in Aiken County, South Carolina. What sets this laurel apart at first glance is the foliage: narrow, willow-like leaves that lend the shrub a finer, more linear texture than the broad-leaved wild Kalmia latifolia. In bloom, 'Willowwood' carries pink flowers with distinct banding, gathered in the familiar rounded clusters that make mountain laurel such a valued broadleaf evergreen for woodland gardens.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe genus Kalmia was named by Linnaeus for his student Pehr Kalm, the naturalist who explored eastern North America in the 1740s, and latifolia means broad-leaved, a name this narrow-leaved selection wears with a wink. Beyond the willowy foliage, 'Willowwood' tends to grow more compact and lower than the species, which makes the shrub easy to place in tighter plantings and layered understory schemes where evergreen structure is wanted without a tall, bulky mass. A comparable narrow-leaved selection, 'Willowcrest', comes from a more northern source; because 'Willowwood' is a southern-origin plant, this is the more dependable choice for zones 8 and 9, where heat and humidity can challenge some mountain laurels.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMountain laurel carries a long human history under the common name spoonwood, from the hard, close-grained wood that Indigenous peoples of the East carved into spoons and small utensils and that later served for tool handles and turned bowls. That heritage comes with a firm warning. Every green part of the plant, along with the pollen and any honey made from the flowers, contains grayanotoxins and is poisonous to livestock, wildlife, and people. 'Willowwood' is grown as an ornamental and pollinator plant, never a medicinal or edible one, and the foliage is best kept away from grazing animals and curious mouths.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, the narrow foliage of 'Willowwood' reads cleaner and more contemporary than standard mountain laurel, a restrained evergreen with a subtle linear feel that suits foundation plantings, small woodland borders, and path-edge understory work without constant pruning. Give acidic, well-drained woodland soil in sun to part shade, plant high rather than deep, and mulch with pine straw to keep the roots cool. 'Willowwood' composes beautifully with other acid-loving plants such as inkberry, leucothoe, blueberry, and ferns, and the toxic evergreen foliage does quiet double duty as deer resistance.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057906290803,"sku":"KALM-LATI-WILL-01G","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/IMG-1431.jpg?v=1731703481"},{"product_id":"kalmia-latifolia-croft-carpet","title":"Kalmia latifolia 'Croft Carpet'","description":"\u003cp\u003eMost mountain laurels are shrubs with presence, upright and woody and faintly aristocratic. 'Croft Carpet' flips the script. This rare, prostrate selection of Kalmia latifolia stays low and spreads into a dense evergreen mat, delivering the understory finish that designers chase in shade gardens: lush, deliberate, and quietly polished. A specimen at the JC Raulston Arboretum measured only about one foot tall while spreading many times as wide.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn late spring and early summer, 'Croft Carpet' scatters the ground-hugging canopy with rounded clusters of soft, cup-shaped flowers, white to pink and freckled with rose inside, exactly the intricate blooms that make mountain laurel a native icon. Like every Kalmia, the flowers hide a bit of botanical theater: ten stamens sit under tension in small pockets of the corolla and spring forward to dust visiting insects with pollen the moment a bee trips them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe genus Kalmia was named by Linnaeus for the botanist Pehr Kalm, one of the early plant explorers of eastern North America, and latifolia means broad-leaved. In the wild, mountain laurel forms evergreen thickets along woodland slopes and edges wherever soils run naturally acidic. 'Croft Carpet' takes that woodland heritage and turns the habit sideways, offering a way to bring year-round structure to places where turf fails and most shrubs feel too bulky. You can read more in the Woodlanders \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/blogs\/news\/a-guide-to-kalmias-the-famed-mountainlaurel\"\u003eGuide to Kalmias\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne caution belongs with all this charm. Every green part of mountain laurel, along with the pollen and any honey from the flowers, contains grayanotoxins and is poisonous to livestock, wildlife, and people, so 'Croft Carpet' is grown as an ornamental and pollinator groundcover, never a medicinal or edible plant. In the garden, use this low laurel as a carpet layer beneath high pines and oaks, as a ribbon stitching together boulders and paths, or as an evergreen slope stabilizer, a modern native alternative to pachysandra or ivy with far more character. The toxic foliage keeps deer at bay as a welcome bonus.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057906323571,"sku":"KALM-LATI-CROF-CARP-01G","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1860.jpg?v=1720139202"},{"product_id":"kerria-japonica-alba","title":"Kerria japonica 'Alba'","description":"\u003cp\u003eKerria is a monotypic genus, a single species that stands alone in the rose family (Rosaceae), native to the mountain woodlands of China and Japan. The old-fashioned kerria has bright green, arching stems and toothed leaves, and in spring the branches light up with flowers that in the common double form look like tiny golden roses. The genus honors William Kerr, the Kew plant hunter who sent the double-flowered form back to England from Canton in the early 1800s, and in Japan the plant is beloved as yamabuki, a name woven through centuries of poetry celebrating that spring yellow.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Alba' is the uncommon single-flowered form, opening soft creamy white rather than the usual gold, a quiet and refreshing alternative that reads beautifully in the low light of a shaded border. The five-petaled flowers show the plain, open face of a wild rose relative, carried along the green canes in spring against fresh, bright foliage. Where the double gold form can feel almost gaudy, the white single flowers of 'Alba' bring a soft clarity to the garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlongside a long life as an ornamental, kerria carries a modest place in traditional Chinese medicine, where a decoction of the flowering shoots, sometimes taken with honey, served as a folk remedy for coughs and for women's complaints. That history is a matter of record rather than recommendation, and this listing offers the detail for interest only, not as medical advice.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, 'Alba' is a fine, easygoing shrub for the semi-shaded to shaded border, growing three to five feet high and wide and spreading gently by suckers into an informal thicket. Kerria thrives in shade that defeats most flowering shrubs, and the white form in particular holds color best out of hot sun. Give well-drained soil, thin and prune the canes right after flowering to keep the arching form open, and pair with ferns, hellebores, and other shade companions. The bright green winter stems carry quiet interest long after the leaves have fallen.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057906421875,"sku":"KERR-JAPO-ALBA-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-429.jpg?v=1720139205"}],"url":"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/collections\/floral-magic.oembed?page=4","provider":"Woodlanders","version":"1.0","type":"link"}