{"title":"Groundcover Shrubs","description":"\u003cp\u003eGroundcover shrubs are the low, wide-spreading woody plants that hug the ground rather than rising from it, many of them evergreen and most of them tougher and longer-lived than herbaceous carpets. Woody structure at ground level gives a planting a firmness that soft ground covers cannot, keeping shape and often leaves right through winter. Grown for foliage, flower, and reliable coverage, they are the durable option for large, difficult, low areas.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the landscape they excel where a surface has to stay covered and cared-for with little attention. They blanket banks and slopes, fill wide beds and islands, edge drives and paths, and hold their coverage in sun or shade where the ground would otherwise wash, weed, or bake. Because so many keep their leaves, they carry structure and green through the season when a herbaceous carpet has gone to bare soil.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe grow groundcover shrubs for their toughness and the long-term coverage they give with minimal upkeep. Woody, evergreen cover binds soil against erosion on slopes, shelters ground-dwelling wildlife year-round, and, in flower and fruit, feeds pollinators and birds low in the garden. Once established, a good groundcover shrub simply gets on with the job for years.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive them a season to spread and knit, and choose the vigor to match the space, generous for a bank, restrained for a bed. For softer, faster carpets see our \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/ground-covers\"\u003eGround Covers\u003c\/a\u003e; for the layer just above see our \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/small-medium-shrubs\"\u003eSmall \u0026amp; Medium Shrubs\u003c\/a\u003e; and lean on \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/southeast-natives\"\u003eSoutheastern Natives\u003c\/a\u003e for regionally adapted choices.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"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":"calluna-vulgaris-gold-haze","title":"Calluna vulgaris \"Gold Haze\"","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCalluna vulgaris\u003c\/em\u003e 'Gold Haze' is a heather grown as much for foliage as for flower: tight, upright sprays of bright golden growth that hold their color through the year and warm to a deeper gold in winter cold. Set in drifts, the plants knit into a low, even evergreen carpet.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn mid to late summer slender spikes of small white flowers rise above the gold, a quiet contrast that the bees find quickly. 'Gold Haze' takes summer heat better than many heathers, which makes the cultivar a more forgiving choice in warmer gardens.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHeather carries centuries of north-European history along with the gold: thatch and bedding and broom, dye and tea and the famous heather honey, all drawn from the windswept moors where \u003cem\u003eCalluna vulgaris\u003c\/em\u003e blankets whole hillsides. Give the plants lean, acidic, sharply drained soil that stays evenly moist, full sun, and a light shearing after bloom to keep the cushion dense.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057821978739,"sku":"CALL-VULG-GOLD-HAZE-01G","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1128.jpg?v=1720136846"},{"product_id":"cephalotaxus-harringtonia-prostrata","title":"Cephalotaxus harringtonia 'Prostrata'","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCephalotaxus harringtonia\u003c\/em\u003e 'Prostrata' is the spreading Japanese plum yew, a low, wide-growing evergreen prized for lush, dark green, needle-like foliage and an easy way with shade. Where the species and its columnar forms stand upright, 'Prostrata' lays out horizontally, three or four feet high and twice as wide, layering into a handsome evergreen groundcover or low border.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNative to the forests of Japan and Korea and grown in Western gardens since the mid-nineteenth century, the plum yew is one of the most shade-tolerant and deer-resistant of evergreens, thriving where junipers and true yews struggle. In Japan the plant carries associations of longevity and resilience, and it earns them: slow, durable, and untroubled by heat, dry shade, or browsing deer. A superb evergreen for the difficult ground beneath trees, along a shaded path, or sprawling over a low wall.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057830039667,"sku":"CEPH-HARR-PROS-01G","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-317.jpg?v=1720137116"},{"product_id":"conradina-verticillata","title":"Conradina verticillata","description":"\u003cp\u003eA small shrub of the Cumberland Plateau, found only on the flood-scoured cobble and sand bars of three river systems in eastern Tennessee and a sliver of Kentucky: the Big South Fork of the Cumberland, the Caney Fork, and the Obed. The rest of the \u003cem\u003eConradina\u003c\/em\u003e clan keeps to the sand scrub of Florida and the Gulf Coast of Alabama, sun-baked and semitropical. This species took a different path, north into the cooler uplands, and the cold-hardiness that came with the move is the gift to gardens farther north.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCumberland rosemary lives by disturbance. The plants grow on bars scoured by spring floods and baked dry by August, and they need that rhythm to survive. Flooding strips out the taller competition that would otherwise shade them off the bar; the drought that follows is the condition their roots are tuned to. Extended floods snap off stem fragments and carry them downstream, where they root in fresh gravel and start new colonies. This is a plant that requires the river to behave like a river. Dam the system, stabilize the banks, and the species quietly disappears.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere are other oddnesses. Cumberland rosemary is the only triploid in the genus, which makes seed production unreliable and most reproduction clonal, so what looks like a colony of separate plants is often a single sprawling individual rooting at the nodes. The genus honors Solomon White Conrad, an eighteenth-century Philadelphia botanist and Quaker schoolmaster whose name attached to this small clan of southeastern mints almost by accident. The leaves, crushed, smell so much like culinary rosemary that they have served as a kitchen substitute, though we would rather you grew the plant than ate it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLavender-pink flowers with darker throat spotting come in May and June, two-lipped and small but freely produced along the trailing stems. The low evergreen mat runs six to twelve inches high and spreads to two or three feet, the foliage holding through winter with a faint bronze cast in cold. Excellent in a rock garden, tumbling over a stone wall, or anywhere the conditions of the native cobble bars can be approximated.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFederally listed as threatened since 1991, which means this plant cannot be sold across state lines. South Carolina and in-person purchase only.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhotos courtesy of Sally and Andy Wasowski.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/blogs\/the-node\/an-exploration-of-the-conradina-genus\"\u003eLearn more about the Conradina genus here\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057846161523,"sku":"CONR-VERT-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Conradina_verticilla_l7Q3C95pblex.jpg?v=1750447856"},{"product_id":"conradina-canescens","title":"Conradina canescens","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe conradinas are dense, aromatic, low shrubs of the mint family, dressed in small, usually needle-like green or gray leaves and hung with little pale purple flowers. Six or seven species grow wild in the southern United States, most of them in Florida on sand or very sandy soil, and all but this one (and one possibly new species) are federally listed as threatened or endangered. \u003cem\u003eConradina canescens\u003c\/em\u003e is the common, widespread member of the clan, a somewhat variable plant of the Gulf Coast dunes of northwest Florida and adjacent Alabama.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGray false rosemary makes a fine garden plant in sunny, sandy, well-drained places with little competition, and would grace an herb garden handsomely, though the leaves are not known to carry any culinary or medicinal value. Drought tolerant once established, the shrub is a natural for xeriscapes and other low-water plantings, and the aromatic foliage releases a clean, resinous scent when brushed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSite gray false rosemary where the fine gray foliage and pale flowers can be read up close: a rock or gravel garden, a hot sunny bank, a sandy coastal bed, or the front of a dry border, among other sun-and-drought lovers that will not crowd the low mound. Bees and butterflies work the flowers steadily, and deer pass the aromatic leaves by.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/blogs\/the-node\/an-exploration-of-the-conradina-genus\"\u003eLearn more about the Conradina genus here\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhoto courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.wildflower.org\/gallery\/result.php?id_image=45869\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAlan Cressler\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057846227059,"sku":"CONR-CANE-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/IMG-7513.heic?v=1771508232"},{"product_id":"conradina-canescens-gray-mound","title":"Conradina canescens 'Gray Mound'","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eConradina canescens\u003c\/em\u003e 'Gray Mound' is a silver-leaved selection of the false rosemary that grows wild on the deep, pine-fringed sands of the northern Gulf Coast, in Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida panhandle, where the species once mingled with sea oats and longleaf pine. A member of the mint family, this aromatic shrub carries soft, needle-like foliage in a ghostly silver-gray, and from spring into early summer, sometimes again in the cool of fall, offers a flush of pale lavender to bluish, two-lipped flowers that native bees and butterflies work eagerly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Gray Mound' is a Woodlanders selection made for form: where wild plants vary in leaf color and habit, this clone is remarkably uniform, dense, tidy, and mounding, spreading gently in well-drained sand with a sculpted, restrained elegance. The low silver cushion suits dry native landscapes, xeriscapes, rock and gravel gardens, and coastal restorations, and the aromatic foliage keeps deer at a distance while perfuming the air when brushed by a hand or the wind.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSite 'Gray Mound' where the silver foliage and fine texture can do quiet work: near an entry, along a path, at the edge of a dry bed, or repeated through a larger planting for rhythm. Pair with stone, gravel, and other fine-textured, drought-tolerant companions that share the taste for sun and sharp drainage, and give room for the mound to be read on its own. The genus honors Solomon White Conrad (1779 to 1831), a Philadelphia botanist whose name lives on in this small clan of southeastern mints.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057846456435,"sku":"CONR-CANE-GRAY-MOUN-01G","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-2135.jpg?v=1720137593"},{"product_id":"conradina-sp","title":"Conradina sp.","description":"\u003cp\u003eSome years ago we introduced two selections of \u003cem\u003eConradina\u003c\/em\u003e collected on the Styx River in southern Alabama, called 'Low Gray' and 'Low Green', and we hope those clones survive in cultivation somewhere still. On a return visit to the Styx River site we gathered several more cuttings from distinctly low-growing plants. This conradina haunts a sandy woodland and cutover near the Styx River, and may well represent a new, as yet undescribed species; what appears to be the same plant turns up some miles east on Blackwater State Forest in northwest Florida. The Styx River plant differs clearly from the taller, more upright \u003cem\u003eConradina canescens\u003c\/em\u003e of the open Gulf Coast.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is a fine, aromatic, ground-hugging shrub with short green or gray needle-like leaves and small purple flowers, releasing a clean, resinous, rosemary-like scent when brushed. Plant in sandy, well-drained soil in full sun, where the low, spreading habit can knit into a fragrant mat.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSite the Styx River rosemary where the trailing form and aromatic foliage earn their keep: a rock or gravel garden, a hot sandy bank, a dry sunny border, or spilling over a low wall. The flowers draw bees and butterflies, deer leave the scented leaves alone, and a settled plant asks almost nothing.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057846620275,"sku":"CONR-SP-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-2018.jpg?v=1722714931"},{"product_id":"distylium-myricoides-piroche-form","title":"Distylium myricoides (Piroche form)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDistylium myricoides\u003c\/em\u003e belongs to the witch-hazel family, Hamamelidaceae, an evergreen cousin of the fragrant winter witch-hazels, though the kinship shows in the flowers rather than the leaves. The Piroche form is a distinct, low-slung selection of the species, chosen for a broad, spreading habit and strong horizontal branching that make the plant read more as living groundwork than as an upright shrub.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere the typical isu tree arches upward into a small tree, the Piroche form stays wide and close to the ground, layering out along strongly tiered branches to cover more width than height. The narrow, leathery leaves carry the same cool, glossy blue-green that makes the isu tree such a handsome foliage plant, holding color through the year and flushing bronze on new growth. The overall effect is a calm, textural sweep of evergreen foliage that knits together as the plants spread.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn late winter and early spring the branches carry clusters of tiny, petal-less flowers in puffs of bright red stamens, an early and welcome source of nectar when little else is in bloom. The show is subtle rather than loud, best appreciated up close, but the timing makes the Piroche form a quiet favorite of the season's first bees. Like the species, this selection traces to the mountain forests of China, where the genus grows in cool, humus-rich woodland.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, the Piroche form is at its best massed on a bank, run along a low wall, or planted in a broad drift where the horizontal branching can spread unchecked as a tall, textural groundcover. Tough and adaptable, the plant shrugs off heat, wind, and drought once established, and deer tend to leave the leathery foliage alone. Pair with camellias, mahonia, and ferns in a woodland border, or use in sweeps for low-maintenance, year-round cover.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057861300339,"sku":"DIST-MYRI-PIRO-FORM-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1358.jpg?v=1720137933"},{"product_id":"dyschoriste-oblongifolia","title":"Dyschoriste oblongifolia","description":"\u003cp\u003eOblongleaf twinflower, \u003cem\u003eDyschoriste oblongifolia\u003c\/em\u003e, is a low, spreading wildflower of the American Southeast, a member of the acanthus family that carpets the dry pine flatwoods, sandhills, and open savannas of Florida and neighboring states. The common name comes from the habit of carrying the small, funnel-shaped flowers in pairs, twinned in the leaf axils along low stems, while the botanical epithet \u003cem\u003eoblongifolia\u003c\/em\u003e simply describes the neat, oblong leaves. An older regional name is snakeherb, a tag shared across the genus \u003cem\u003eDyschoriste\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom late spring into early winter the plant opens inch-wide blooms of soft blue to lavender-purple, each a five-lobed funnel veined in a deeper tone at the throat. Modest one at a time, they add up to a long, quiet season of color across the mat. For native-garden makers the real value runs deeper than looks: oblongleaf twinflower is a documented larval host for the common buckeye butterfly, and the flowers draw bees and a range of butterflies through the warm months, so a planting works as quietly for wildlife as for the eye.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStanding only six to eight inches tall and spreading slowly into a dense, low groundcover, the plant fills the ground layer where taller things would overwhelm. Set oblongleaf twinflower between stepping stones, along a path edge, at the front of a native bed, or as a tidy understory beneath pines and open-canopy shrubs. The slow, clumping spread stays where wanted rather than running, which makes the plant an easy neighbor in mixed native plantings and a natural fit for water-wise, low-input gardens.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTrue to the dry, sunny flatwoods of the plant's origin, oblongleaf twinflower wants full sun to light shade and sharp, sandy drainage, and shrugs off heat and short droughts once the roots take hold. Hardy through roughly USDA zones 7 to 10 and semi-evergreen in the warmer end of that range, the plant returns dependably year after year. Woodlanders grew this stock from wild Florida material, so gardeners in the Southeast get a genuinely local native, at home in the very soils and seasons the species evolved to meet.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057863594099,"sku":"DYSC-OBLO-01Q","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-634.jpg?v=1720137962"},{"product_id":"erica-x-darleyensis","title":"Erica × darleyensis (Darley Dale Heath)","description":"\u003cp\u003eHeaths and heathers run to dozens of species and hundreds of named forms, and most of them sulk in the heat and humidity of the American South. \u003cem\u003eErica\u003c\/em\u003e × \u003cem\u003edarleyensis\u003c\/em\u003e, a hybrid of two European mountain heaths, \u003cem\u003eErica erigena\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eErica carnea\u003c\/em\u003e, is one of the happy exceptions, tough and adaptable enough to give Southern gardeners a real chance at a plant most only admire in cooler climates. The renowned plantsman Michael Dirr, in his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, allows that if one wants to grow a heath in the southeastern United States, this hybrid represents a credible starting point.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDarley Dale heath makes a low, spreading, evergreen mound to about two feet, clothed in fine, needle-like, deep green foliage that often takes on bronze or cream tips on new growth. The real gift is the season of bloom: from late fall through early spring, when little else is flowering, the stems line themselves with small, urn-shaped, rose-pink flowers held in leafy terminal sprays, a quiet run of color across the coldest, grayest months and an early nectar source for any bees abroad on a mild winter day.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLow, dense, and neat, Darley Dale heath is a natural weaver and edger. Plant a drift as an evergreen groundcover on a sunny slope, run a ribbon along the front of a border or a path, or set the plant among dwarf conifers and other acid-lovers for a heath-and-heather tapestry of contrasting textures. The winter flowers pair beautifully with the bare red stems of dogwoods and the pale bark of birches, and a mass planting reads as a soft, living carpet even out of bloom.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive the plant what the mountain parents want: full sun to light shade and moist but sharply drained, acidic soil enriched with peat, leaf mold, or compost. Heaths resent heavy, wet clay and standing water, so drainage is the one non-negotiable. Shear lightly right after flowering to keep the mound tight, taking care not to cut back into bare old wood, which does not resprout well. Hardy in USDA zones 5 through 8, undemanding once settled, Darley Dale heath earns its keep in the very season most gardens go quiet. Photos courtesy of \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/landscapeplants.oregonstate.edu\/plants\/erica-darleyensis\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eOregon State University\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057865724019,"sku":"ERIC-DARL-01G","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Ericaxdarleyensis1.jpg?v=1723236937"},{"product_id":"euonymus-fortunei-wolong-ghost","title":"Euonymus fortunei 'Wolong Ghost'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis luminous evergreen groundcover came into gardens through Heronswood Nursery, from a collection the plantsman Dan Hinkley made on the slopes above the Wolong Panda Preserve in western China. The long, dark green, sharply pointed leaves are laced with bold silver-white veins, a ghostly netting that gives the cultivar the second half of the name and lifts a shaded corner out of the gloom.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEuonymus fortunei, the wintercreeper, belongs to the staff-vine family, Celastraceae, and is famous for leading a double life: a flat, ground-hugging carpet in youth that, given a wall or a trunk, throws out clinging rootlets and climbs like ivy into a taller, shrubbier, flowering form. The genus name comes from the Greek for good name, an old euphemism, and may in truth honor Euonyme, mother of the Furies in myth, a wry nod to the poisonous nature of the tribe; the epithet fortunei remembers Robert Fortune, the Scottish plant hunter who carried so many East Asian plants west.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeauty here comes with a frank caution, one Dan Hinkley himself raised. Wintercreeper is vigorous to a fault, and across much of the United States the species has proven aggressively invasive, climbing and smothering trees and escaping into woodlands where birds spread the seed. All parts are toxic if eaten. None of this need rule the plant out of a garden, but it does argue for planting with intent, in a bed that can be watched and clipped rather than turned loose near wild ground.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePut to considered use, 'Wolong Ghost' is a superb foliage plant for shade, the silver veining glowing against ferns and coarser leaves such as autumn fern (Dryopteris erythrosora), Japanese climbing fern (Lygodium japonicum), and Selaginella braunii. Grow the plant as a flat evergreen carpet at the foot of a wall, along a woodland path, or down a shady bank, or let the stems climb a surface for a living green tapestry. Give any soil that drains, sun to deep shade, and a yearly edit with the shears to keep the spread honest.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057868836979,"sku":"EUON-FORT-WOLO-GHOS-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-2021.jpg?v=1720138081"},{"product_id":"euonymus-sp","title":"Euonymus sp.","description":"\u003cp\u003eEvery nursery keeps a few mysteries, and this trailing evergreen euonymus is one of ours: a plant still awaiting a firm name, possibly Euonymus aculeatus, collected by Frank Bell high on Mount Emei (Emeishan) in Sichuan, China. Low and spreading, the stems carry long-pointed, finely toothed leaves about two inches long, glossy and evergreen, on a habit that hugs the ground and wanders steadily outward.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike the rest of the genus, this euonymus belongs to the staff-vine family, Celastraceae, kin to the spindle trees whose name reaches back through the Greek for good name, an old euphemism that softens the fact that many spindles are poisonous. The true glory arrives with the fruit: bright red, spiky capsules of remarkable form that seem almost carved against the dark leaves, the kind of detail that stops a visitor mid-path.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs a new and still lightly documented introduction from a famous mountain flora, this plant is offered in a spirit of shared discovery. The low, trailing frame suits a groundcover role in shady or half-shaded ground, knitting across a bank or filling the front of a woodland bed, and the pliant stems would take just as happily to a low trellis or a wall. Keep the poisonous fruit in mind wherever children or pets roam.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive moist but well-drained soil in part to full shade, a spot with room to spread, and a little patience while the plant settles in. Because the identity is not yet fixed, we especially welcome grower reports on hardiness, habit, and bloom; every observation helps put a proper name to a genuinely intriguing find.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057868902515,"sku":"EUON-SP-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/7DF881E6-13AA-4DAD-B70A-AEA6C26D2714.jpg?v=1729003996"},{"product_id":"ficus-vaccinoides","title":"Ficus vaccinioides","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Latin gives away the joke before you have even seen the plant. \u003cem\u003eFicus vaccinioides\u003c\/em\u003e, the Formosan creeping fig, is a fig that has decided to impersonate a blueberry: \u003cem\u003evaccinioides\u003c\/em\u003e means resembling \u003cem\u003eVaccinium\u003c\/em\u003e, and the small, glossy, obovate leaves running close along reddish stems really could pass for an evergreen huckleberry. They are no relation at all. They are a true fig, latex and all, just one that has shrunk to a few inches tall and given up any ambition of climbing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat last part is what sets them apart from the creeping fig everyone knows. \u003cem\u003eFicus pumila\u003c\/em\u003e will swallow a wall; this one stays low and well-mannered, mounding and trailing into a dense, fine-textured evergreen carpet, rooting as it goes but never scaling anything it should not. The effect is quiet and faintly luxurious, the kind of restrained sheen that reads as intentional in a way few groundcovers manage. They are equally at home spilling from a container, softening the edge of a shaded bed, or threading over the face of a low wall.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey come from the littoral thickets of southern Taiwan, and they are tougher than the delicate look suggests: notably more cold-hardy than most figs, holding evergreen through mild winters and proven at the JC Raulston Arboretum up in Zone 7, where in a sheltered spot they take hard cold by dropping their leaves and returning from the root. That toughness is, in fact, how they reached us. This is a plant that traveled, carried along by collectors who recognized something worth keeping: out of Yucca Do Nursery in Texas, on to Riverbanks Botanical Garden in Columbia, into the collections at the JC Raulston Arboretum at NC State, and at last to Aiken. The finest plants often arrive by exactly this kind of roundabout, hand-to-hand route, which is usually a sign they were worth the trip.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA choice, collectable little thing, sterile and undemanding, asking only for part shade to sun and a soil that drains. \u003cem\u003eFicus vaccinioides\u003c\/em\u003e will not shout for attention. They will simply make everything around them look considered.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhoto courtesy of the JC Raulston Arboretum\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057869852787,"sku":"FICU-VACC-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/FicusvaccinoidesJCRA_eb886c17-0f0e-438b-99e8-1486c0026aca.jpg?v=1762295259"},{"product_id":"ficus-pumila","title":"Ficus pumila","description":"\u003cp\u003eFigvine is very unlike the common edible fig (Ficus carica). This evergreen climber wears small, fingernail-sized rounded leaves and is most often seen scaling masonry walls, where a fringe of tiny aerial rootlets grips the roughest stone and brick. Given time, the creeping fig will trace a wall in intricate green patterns or blanket the surface entirely in a flat, dense sheet, one of the finest self-clinging covers for a shaded or partly shaded wall in a warm garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plant leads a curious double life. In youth the growth is fine and flat, all small heart-shaped leaves pressed close to the wall, but as the stems gain height and age the character changes: mature shoots stand out from the surface on short woody branches and carry much larger, leathery, blunt-tipped adult leaves, and only then do the small, hard, inedible figs appear. Gardeners who want the delicate juvenile look forever simply cut the old growth back before the shrubby adult stage takes hold.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to eastern Asia and long grown across the southern United States, the creeping fig has an ethnobotanical cousin worth knowing. A Taiwanese variety, Ficus pumila var. awkeotsang, bears seeds that release a natural pectin when rubbed in water, setting into the cool amber aiyu jelly beloved in the night markets of Taiwan and Singapore. The ornamental creeping fig offered here is grown for foliage rather than the table, since the figs of the plain species are not eaten, but the family likeness is a pleasant thing to carry in mind.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden the creeping fig is as useful as anything grown, softening walls, chimneys, and courtyard corners, spilling from raised beds, or knitting into a fine glossy groundcover in shade. Vigor is the one caution: the clinging rootlets can mar soft mortar and the plant will travel far, so choose a surface with room to run or keep the growth clipped and stand ready with the shears. Evergreen and fast in zones 8 to 11, happy in full sun to part shade and any soil that drains, the creeping fig also takes beautifully to topiary frames and bonsai, the small leaves lending themselves to patient shaping.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhotos courtesy of Jim Robbins and David Stang.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057870049395,"sku":"FICU-PUMI-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/FicuspumilaDavidStang.jpg?v=1751289006"},{"product_id":"hypericum-reductum","title":"Hypericum reductum","description":"\u003cp\u003eHypericum reductum is the ground-hugging member of the family, a low, heathery evergreen that mounds and mats rather than climbing, rarely rising much above the knee. The stems are crowded with fine, needle-like, deep green leaves that give an almost coniferous texture, and through late spring and summer the whole low sweep is dotted with small, bright yellow, star-shaped flowers full of stamens.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe epithet reductum, reduced, suits a plant that has pared everything down: fine leaves, small flowers, low stature. Botanists now file the species under the name Hypericum tenuifolium, the thin-leaved St. John's Wort, though the older reductum still travels widely in the trade. Over both sits the genus name Hypericum, from the Greek hyper and eikon, above and image, a relic of the Midsummer custom of hanging flowering St. John's Wort above doorways and icons at the feast of Saint John to keep harm from the house.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne of our favorite Hypericums, and one of the many southeastern natives Woodlanders was probably the first to offer, Atlantic St. John's Wort belongs to the deep sandy soils of the coastal plain, from North Carolina south through Florida and west to Alabama. The plant colonizes beach dunes, sandhills, and scrub, often near seasonally wet depressions, thriving on lean, sharply drained ground and shrugging off drought, heat, and salt air.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor a hot, sandy, sun-baked spot where a lawn would sulk, Atlantic St. John's Wort makes an easy, good-looking groundcover, spreading into a fine-textured evergreen mat spangled with summer gold. Use the shrub on a sandy bank, in a rock or gravel garden, along a coastal border, or in a sandhill or scrub restoration, and set wiregrass, gopher apple, and prickly pear alongside for a planting that asks almost nothing. Photos courtesy of Shirley Denton.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057887744115,"sku":"HYPE-REDU-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Hypericum_reductum_Shirley-Denton.jpg?v=1747080950"},{"product_id":"indigofera-incarnata","title":"Indigofera incarnata","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe genus is the one that turned the Lowcountry blue. Indigofera gave colonial South Carolina its great cash crop alongside rice, the dye that Eliza Lucas Pinckney coaxed into commercial cultivation around Charleston in the 1740s and that filled the colony's coffers for a generation, made with skill drawn largely from enslaved West Africans. That fortune rested on a tropical cousin, Indigofera tinctoria, but the family trait runs through the whole genus, and the leaves of this one will give up the same blue if you care to steep them. We grow the plant for the flowers instead.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndigofera incarnata, the Chinese indigo, comes from the streambanks and open woods of China and Japan, and earns the other common name, summer wisteria, honestly: through June and July the plant hangs narrow four to eight inch racemes of small pea flowers, twenty to forty to a spike, in a clear soft pink. The bloom opens on the current year's wood and carries on in scattered flushes toward September. (The white-flowered form is sold separately as 'Alba'; this is the rose-colored species, whatever a careless label might once have suggested.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLow and traveling, a foot or two tall and three or four wide, the Chinese indigo suckers gently into a soft mound of fine pinnate foliage, and, being a legume, gives nitrogen back to the ground it sits in. Cut the plant hard in late winter and it returns to flower right through the heat, a quiet rose-pink drift in the stretch of summer when most shrubs have already called it a year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUse Chinese indigo as a flowering groundcover on a bank or at the front of a border, where the low, spreading habit can knit awkward ground together and the long pink season fills the summer lull. Give sun, a little afternoon shade where summers run brutal, and decent drainage, and pair with grasses, late perennials, or other tough sun-lovers; bees and other pollinators work the flowers all season.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057898426483,"sku":"INDI-INCA-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-413.jpg?v=1720138990"},{"product_id":"indigofera-incarnata-alba","title":"Indigofera incarnata 'Alba'","description":"\u003cp\u003eNo genus carries more Carolina history in its name than this one. Indigofera means indigo-bearing, and indigo was the blue that built the colonial Lowcountry: in the 1740s a young Eliza Lucas Pinckney coaxed a successful crop out of the land around Charleston, and for a generation the dye stood second only to rice among the colony's exports, made with skill drawn largely from enslaved West Africans, until the Revolution cut the British bounty and the fields went quiet. The plant that did that work was Indigofera tinctoria.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is their ornamental cousin, grown for the eye rather than the vat. Indigofera incarnata is the Chinese indigo, and incarnata means flesh-colored, after the soft pink the species usually wears; 'Alba' is the white-flowered form, cooler and quieter. Fine, almost ferny pinnate leaves set off long racemes of small white pea flowers from early summer well into fall, opening a few at a time so there is always something coming.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese make a low, slowly spreading subshrub, a foot or two high and wider than that, the kind of soft-scaled groundcover that knits an awkward slope together. The flowers come on new growth, so a hard cut in late winter only improves the plant, the way it does a buddleia. Being a legume, the shrub fixes its own nitrogen and asks little of the soil.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGive 'Alba' sun, a little afternoon shade where summers run brutal, and decent drainage, and the plant will quietly cover ground that nothing tidier would forgive. Use on a bank, at the front of a border, or spilling over a low wall, where the white bloom cools a hot planting and lengthens the season; pair with grasses and late perennials, and let the bees find the flowers all summer.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057898492019,"sku":"INDI-INCA-ALBA-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-414.jpg?v=1720138993"},{"product_id":"jasminum-nudiflorum","title":"Jasminum nudiflorum","description":"\u003cp\u003eJasminum nudiflorum, the winter jasmine, is the great cold-weather bloomer of the genus, a deciduous scrambling shrub from western China that opens bright yellow, six-petaled flowers on bare green stems in the depth of winter, often from January into March, long before the leaves return. The name says as much: nudiflorum, the naked-flowering jasmine, blooming on stripped, leafless wands.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnlike the perfumed white jasmines, winter jasmine is scentless, trading fragrance for the far rarer gift of color in the coldest, barest weeks of the year. The arching green stems spread from a central crown and root where they touch the ground, so the plant makes an easy cascade over a wall or bank, a loose mound in the open, or, tied to a support, an informal climber. In China the flower is beloved as yingchun, the one that welcomes spring.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat Chinese name carries more than sentiment. Winter jasmine, yingchun, has a long place in traditional Chinese medicine, where the leaves and flowers were used to cool fevers and inflammation and, applied externally, to treat cuts, bruises, swellings, and wounds, and were sometimes brewed as a tea. Modern phytochemical work has found antioxidant and antibacterial compounds in the plant, though the research is still early. This is traditional-use and early-research information, shared for interest only, and not medical advice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWinter jasmine is one of the toughest and easiest of the clan, hardy to zone 6, thriving in ordinary soil in sun or part shade, and asking only a hard cut every few years to renew the tangle of stems. Use the plant to spill down a slope or retaining wall, to cover a bank as a groundcover, to soften a fence, or trained up a trellis for a winter show. Full sun brings the heaviest bloom; plant where the yellow flowers can be seen from indoors in the cold months.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057901637747,"sku":"JASM-NUDI-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-423.jpg?v=1720139092"},{"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":"lantana-montevidensis","title":"Lantana montevidensis","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhere the shrubby lantanas stand up, Lantana montevidensis lies down and travels. This is the trailing lantana, a low, weeping member of the verbena family, Verbenaceae, native to the warm grasslands of southern South America, from southern Brazil across Uruguay and Paraguay into Argentina. The species carries a place name in the epithet: montevidensis means of Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital near which the plant was first gathered and described, so the botanical name is really a small geography lesson tucked into Latin.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSince leaving the pampas the trailing lantana has become one of the most planted groundcovers of warm gardens worldwide, valued wherever summers run long and water runs short. The oval, deep green leaves are strongly scented, giving off a sharp herbal smell when brushed that most browsing animals decline, which is part of why deer and rabbits pass the plant by. As with the rest of the genus the foliage is not for eating, and the small dark fruits are best left to the birds; the value here is ornamental and ecological rather than edible. Bees and butterflies, on the other hand, treat the flowers as a reliable filling station, and the trailing lantana blooms so steadily that the buffet rarely closes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe flowers themselves are the color of dusk, clusters of small lavender to violet-purple florets, each with a paler, sometimes creamy eye, carried in flat little heads just above the foliage. In frost-free gardens the show runs nearly year-round, and elsewhere from spring until cold weather calls a halt. The stems root as they run, weaving a dense, weed-smothering mat perhaps a foot or two deep and spreading three to five feet or more, and where a stem meets an edge the growth simply pours over the lip in a soft violet waterfall.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePut that trailing habit to work: let the plant cascade over a retaining wall, spill from a raised bed or tall container, ramble down a hot bank too steep to mow, or knit together the front of a dry, sunny border. Full sun brings the heaviest bloom, though the trailing lantana tolerates light shade better than the shrubby kinds do. Lean, sharply drained soil is all the plant asks, and once established the groundcover shrugs off drought and the reflected heat of paving and stone. In the frost-free Deep South the mat stays evergreen; farther north the trailing lantana behaves as a root-hardy perennial, so shear the frosted top in early spring and let fresh runners return from the base. Set the purple against silver artemisia, gold lantana, or blue plumbago for a planting built to take the worst of summer.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057909305459,"sku":"LANT-MONT-01G","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-898.jpg?v=1720139259"},{"product_id":"podocarpus-macrophyllus-low-growing","title":"Podocarpus macrophyllus (low growing)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis low-growing form of \u003cem\u003ePodocarpus macrophyllus\u003c\/em\u003e is a compact, spreading evergreen with flat, needle-like leaves that spiral tightly around the stems. Where the ordinary yew pine climbs into an upright shrub or small tree, this selection stays low and horizontal, building a dense, glossy green mat of steady year-round texture and structure.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe habit is the value. A low, wide, spreading frame makes the plant a natural for the front of a border, a foundation planting, a shaded garden edge, or a bold evergreen groundcover where height would only get in the way. The fine, dark foliage holds through southern heat and reads as refined and composed in both formal and naturalistic settings.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNative to Japan, this low-growing form was sourced by Woodlanders from a rare specimen in Alabama, and remains a dependable choice for gardeners seeking form and simplicity without height dominance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGrow the plant in full sun to part shade and well-drained soil, giving a little afternoon shade in the hottest gardens. Water to establish, then enjoy a drought-tolerant, low-maintenance evergreen that takes light shearing, tolerates salt and sandy ground, and is generally passed over by deer.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057944334451,"sku":"PODO-MACR-LOW-GROW-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-471.jpg?v=1720140203"},{"product_id":"rhus-aromatica","title":"Rhus aromatica","description":"\u003cp\u003eFragrant sumac is a versatile deciduous shrub native across much of the eastern and central United States, where the plant threads scattered woodlands, rocky slopes, and open banks. The trifoliate leaves, often mistaken at a glance for poison oak, are entirely harmless, and a crushed leaf releases the clean, lemony-resinous scent that gives the plant every one of the common names, from fragrant sumac to skunkbush, depending on the nose. The genus name Rhus is the old Greek and Latin word for the sumacs, and the epithet aromatica names the scent directly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough summer the foliage is a soft blue-green of fine texture, and in earliest spring, before the leaves break, small chartreuse-yellow flowers open in tight, catkin-like spikes along the bare twigs, one of the first offerings in the shrub border for waking bees. The plant is mostly dioecious, so only female plants set the clusters of fuzzy crimson berries that ripen in late summer and hold through winter, feeding birds and adding color. In autumn the leaves turn a layered blaze of orange, scarlet, burgundy, and oxblood purple, often all at once, which makes fragrant sumac as valuable for fall display as for year-round structure.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFragrant sumac carries a long human history as well. Indigenous peoples across the continent used the tannin-rich plant in food, medicine, and craft: the tart, vitamin-C-rich berries steeped in cool water into a lemonade-like drink, the leaves and bark supplied dye and tanned leather, and root, bark, and berry preparations served a range of traditional remedies. The astringent chemistry that made the plant useful is shared across the whole sumac clan.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew natives work harder in a difficult spot. Fragrant sumac thrives in full sun or light shade and is especially suited to dry banks, slopes, and lean, rocky or sandy ground where erosion control is needed, and low-growing selections have long been used as groundcovers and mass plantings where turf is impractical. Highly variable in form, the plant may hug the ground or build into a shrub of six to twelve feet; whatever the habit, expect durability, wildlife value, and strong seasonal interest. Deer tend to pass the aromatic foliage by. Plant a female near a male if the berries are wanted.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057977036915,"sku":"RHUS-AROM-01G","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/RhusaromaticaAlanCressler.jpg?v=1773673428"},{"product_id":"rubus-irenaeus","title":"Rubus irenaeus","description":"\u003cp\u003eRubus irenaeus is a raspberry that has forgotten how to be a bramble. Rather than the arching, thorny canes of the fruiting kinds, the plant trails flat along the ground on downy, weakly prickled stems, laying down a dense evergreen carpet of large, rounded, coltsfoot-like leaves, each six inches or more across, dark and glossy above and felted pale brown beneath. Few groundcovers of any kind bring foliage this bold to deep shade.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe species hails from the mountains of central and western China and reached Western gardens around 1900, one of the many treasures the great collector Ernest Henry Wilson sent home to the Veitch nursery. Rubus is the ancient Latin name for the brambles, a vast and famously enthusiastic genus of blackberries and raspberries; irenaeus, from the Greek for peaceful, sets this quiet, well-mannered groundcover gently apart from the running, scrambling habits of the tribe. In leaf the plant reads more like a wild ginger or a bergenia than any raspberry.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWoodlanders obtained this rarity many years ago from a garden in Sumter, South Carolina, where the plant was quietly in cultivation, and have not met with it anywhere else in the South since. In early summer, upright stems rise above the leafy mat to carry small, white, five-petaled flowers, and by late summer these give way to little orange-red raspberries, edible if modest, and much appreciated by bees, butterflies, and birds. The fruit is a bonus rather than a crop, borne on a plant grown above all for the foliage.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, few evergreens will carpet full, dry shade with leaves this large and handsome, though the plant is just as content in sun given steady moisture. Run Rubus irenaeus beneath shrubs and high canopy, down a shaded bank, or along a woodland path where the bold, bronze-flushed leaves can be read at close range, and pair with ferns, hellebores, and other shade companions of finer texture. A rare, quietly aristocratic groundcover for the difficult places where ordinary carpets give up.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057981427827,"sku":"RUBU-IREN-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1202.jpg?v=1720140959"},{"product_id":"sarcandra-glabra","title":"Sarcandra glabra","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis plant is a botanical time machine. \u003cem\u003eSarcandra glabra\u003c\/em\u003e belongs to the Chloranthaceae, a flowering-plant family with only four surviving genera worldwide and a fossil record reaching back into the Early Cretaceous, more than a hundred million years ago. Pollen and floral fossils of the Chloranthaceae are among the earliest evidence of flowering plants anywhere on Earth, and the family was already abundant when the dinosaurs were only in their middle age. Today \u003cem\u003eSarcandra\u003c\/em\u003e is one of just four genera left from a lineage that once spread across what is now Portugal, Spain, and eastern North America, and most of that Cretaceous diversity is gone. The little plant in the garden is a quiet survivor of a family that mostly did not make it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plant is genuinely beautiful, too. \u003cem\u003eSarcandra\u003c\/em\u003e forms a slow-spreading mound one to two feet tall, with elliptical, leathery, deeply serrated evergreen leaves that carry a hint of nandina without the legginess. The Chinese name \u003cem\u003eCao Shan Hu\u003c\/em\u003e, grass coral, catches the point exactly: the small, bright orange-red drupes that ripen in autumn and hold through winter into spring, glossy and tightly clustered like miniature branches of coral against the leaves. Small yellowish flowers come in late spring, but the fruit is the show. Another Chinese name, \u003cem\u003eZhong Jie Feng\u003c\/em\u003e, and the old Western name nine-knotted flower both come from the segmented, jointed stems.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe native range runs across the eastern half of Asia, from China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan through Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia to Sri Lanka, India, and the Philippines, wherever there are wet, shaded slopes and humid valley floors. In China the plant has served in traditional medicine for a thousand years, above all for bruises, bone fractures, arthritis, and injury, a tradition set out in the fields below. In Japan the branches are one of the plants used for chabana, the spare flower arrangement of the tea ceremony, especially at New Year, paired with winter jasmine.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn a Southeastern garden \u003cem\u003eSarcandra glabra\u003c\/em\u003e makes a refined evergreen groundcover for moist, deeply shaded ground, lovely with hellebores, hostas, hakone grass, ferns, wild ginger, and the smaller woodland camellias. Reliably hardy through zone 8, the plant pushes into zone 7 with shelter, though hard freezes can cut it to the ground, from which it usually returns in spring. Give the rich, moist, organic floor of a woodland understory, keep it out of drying full sun, and the plant rewards the effort with year-round structure and a coral-bright fruit display that runs for months.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor the gardener building a serious shade garden, the collector with a taste for evolutionary depth, or anyone who would like to grow something whose lineage has, in one form or another, come through every mass extinction since flowering plants began.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057993322611,"sku":"SARC-GLAB-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Sarcandra_glabra_Woodlanders1.webp?v=1783083914"},{"product_id":"selaginella-moellendorffii","title":"Selaginella moellendorffii","description":"\u003cp\u003eSelaginella moellendorffii is one of those rare plants that quietly remind a gardener how ancient and astonishing the plant kingdom can be. A member of the storied Selaginella lineage, survivors from the Carboniferous coal forests, this spikemoss brings a piece of deep botanical time into the modern shade garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to East and Southeast Asia, Selaginella moellendorffii threads naturally through moist woodland floors, forming soft, bright-green mats that stay lush even when the rest of the understory sulks through summer heat. The finely textured foliage has the same fern-like delicacy many gardeners love, but with an almost luminous quality in the right light, like a moss that decided to grow a little taller and carry itself with more elegance.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn botanical circles, this spikemoss has held special interest for more than good looks. Through the twentieth century and beyond, researchers prized the species as a model organism for understanding plant evolution, since a simple vascular system and humble architecture offer clues to how the earliest land plants made their way onto dry ground. Long before appearing in ornamental gardens, Selaginella moellendorffii turned up in laboratories and botanical collections, and in 2011 became one of the first spikemosses to have a full genome sequenced.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor all that academic fame, Selaginella moellendorffii stays wonderfully down-to-earth for gardeners. Give the plant shade, steady moisture, and a cool, organic-rich soil, and the mats will settle in happily, weaving soft green texture through shaded beds, over stones, or along the edges of a woodland path. The spread is gentle rather than aggressive, more companion than conqueror, and the fresh green color holds through the year in mild climates.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor anyone who delights in plants with lineage, subtlety, and an almost prehistoric grace, Selaginella moellendorffii is the kind of quiet treasure that enriches a garden without clamoring for attention, a living relic offered in the Woodlanders spirit of curiosity and care.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057995255923,"sku":"SELA-MOEL-01G","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1203.jpg?v=1720141193"},{"product_id":"selaginella-braunii-involvens","title":"Selaginella braunii (involvens)","description":"\u003cp\u003eSelaginella braunii, known in older texts as Selaginella involvens and in gardens as Braun's spikemoss or the arborvitae fern, belongs to one of the oldest surviving lineages of plants on Earth. The Selaginellas are not true ferns but spikemosses, an ancient group whose ancestry runs back more than three hundred million years, long before flowering plants reshaped the world. In the shaded understory of primeval forests these plants held their ground, and Braun's spikemoss carries that inheritance forward with quiet dignity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to the cool, humid woodlands of southern China and neighboring parts of East Asia, Selaginella braunii drew the eye of plant collectors early, prized for evergreen persistence and finely divided, lace-like foliage that mimics a miniature conifer or a frond of cedar. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the Western world was besotted with exotic ferns and fern-allies, Selaginella species found their way into conservatories and shaded Victorian gardens. Where some spikemoss relatives earned fame for dramatic resurrection after drying to a crisp, Braun's spikemoss built a steadier reputation: handsome, dependable, and unfussy given shade and moisture.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn cultivation, the plant is grown for the very traits that carried the lineage through the ages, a low, slowly creeping habit, the knack of knitting fine green texture across damp woodland soil, and a reliable, near-evergreen presence in the dimmest corners. Braun's spikemoss behaves like a living understory tapestry, dense enough to notice, restrained enough to let showier woodland plants take the lead, and thick enough to shade out weeds as the mat fills in.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSet beneath camellias, tucked into mossy stonework, threaded along the edge of a shaded path, or skirting taller plants in a container, Selaginella braunii lends a shaded garden a sense of continuity, a thread linking today's planting to the deep botanical past. There is elegance in that persistence, the sort of quiet beauty that rewards a gardener who values a plant with a history older than the flowers themselves.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057995452531,"sku":"SELA-BRAU-INVO-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-794.jpg?v=1720141200"},{"product_id":"selaginella-uncinata","title":"Selaginella uncinata","description":"\u003cp\u003ePeacock moss is not a moss at all but a very low, spreading fern relative, a spikemoss whose scale-like leaves clothe trailing stems that root as they run and knit into patches across moist, shaded ground. The great distinction of Selaginella uncinata is color: in good light the foliage takes on an iridescent, metallic blue-green sheen, the peacock shimmer that gives the plant a common name.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to southern China, peacock moss has been grown and gathered for centuries, prized wherever a shaded, humid corner needs a jewel. The delicate, fern-like fronds are soft and almost velvety to the touch, and the blue cast deepens in shade and shifts with the angle of the light, so that a single patch seems to change color as a visitor moves past. Set between flagstones on a shaded walk, at the edge of a water feature, or across the floor of a terrarium, the effect is quietly enchanting.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the plant's homeland, peacock moss is far more than an ornament. The whole plant has served as a folk herb in south China for at least four hundred years, gathered for a long list of complaints, and modern laboratories have taken an interest in the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds the fronds contain. That double life, garden jewel and traditional medicine, is common among the spikemosses.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs a garden plant, peacock moss thrives in consistently moist soil, partial to full shade, and humid air, which makes the species equally at home in a shaded woodland bed and an indoor terrarium or low-light room. The creeping mats spread readily, adding texture and an unusual color to any shaded planting, and ask little beyond moisture and shelter from harsh sun. For plant lovers after a touch of enchantment, few groundcovers give so much for so little.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhotos courtesy of Diane Ozdamar and Gordon Dickson.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057995518067,"sku":"SELA-UNCI-01G","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Selaginellauncinata-DianeOzdamar.png?v=1725454048"},{"product_id":"smilax-biflora-var-biflora","title":"Smilax biflora var. biflora","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis curious little Smilax is one of the quieter treasures in the Woodlanders catalog, a deciduous groundcover built of fine, twiggy, interlacing stems and small leaves, so densely and geometrically branched that the plant earned the house name Chicken Wire Plant. A member of the greenbrier family, Smilacaceae, this dwarf relative of the climbing greenbriers trades the usual vining habit for a low, intricate, shrubby tangle.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plant carries a small tale of mistaken identity. Woodlanders obtained the stock years ago from Brookside Gardens in Maryland, where it had come in as Smilax fragrans, and the nursery offered the plant under that name for years. Only later did the noted French plantsman Olivier Colin identify the plant correctly as Smilax biflora var. biflora, apparently native to China, and set the record straight.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrown for texture rather than flower, Chicken Wire Plant makes a most interesting groundcover for shade or semi-shade, the fine lattice of stems catching light and casting a delicate shadow unlike anything else in the shade border. Small, inconspicuous flowers give way to the occasional berry, but the intricate branching is the whole point, an architectural filigree at ground level that rewards a close look.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUse the Chicken Wire Plant as a conversation-piece groundcover at the front of a shaded bed, along a woodland path, or among ferns, hostas, and other shade companions that set off the fine, twiggy texture. Give part to full shade and a moist but well-drained soil, and let this rare and unusual Smilax knit slowly into a low, lacy mat where a knowing eye will find the joke in the name.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057997287539,"sku":"SMIL-BIFL-VAR-BIFL-01G","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-535.jpg?v=1720141263"},{"product_id":"smilax-pumila","title":"Smilax pumila","description":"\u003cp\u003eDwarf greenbrier is the gentlest member of a prickly clan. Where most of the greenbriers, the Smilax vines, arm themselves with vicious hooks, Smilax pumila comes up soft and unarmed, a low, scrambling, evergreen groundcover of the Southeastern coastal plain, safe to handle and easy to place. The mottled, arrow-shaped leaves hold a quiet, marbled green through the year, and on female plants clusters of bright orange to red berries glow in the winter undergrowth like drops of fire.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA member of the greenbrier family, Smilacaceae, dwarf greenbrier grows wild in the pine forests and post-oak woods of the coastal plain, where the soil is fast-draining, sandy, and low in nutrients. Rather than climbing, the plant creeps and scrambles at ground level, spreading slowly into a low evergreen mat that makes a fine, thornless groundcover for the dry, partly shaded, sandy places that defeat fussier plants.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe greenbriers carry a long ethnobotanical record, and dwarf greenbrier is no exception. The rhizomes have been used in folk medicine to ease rheumatism, and the roots, like those of the true sarsaparillas, were brewed as a tonic and used to flavor root beer and other drinks, a use that gave the plant the name sarsaparilla vine across parts of the South. Native peoples across the greenbriers' range brewed the roots for teas and gathered the tender young shoots as a cooked green.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, use dwarf greenbrier as a low, evergreen, thornless groundcover in a woodland or native planting, a wildlife garden, or a dry, sandy, partly shaded bank where the marbled leaves and winter berries earn their place and the creeping habit binds loose soil. The berries feed birds and small wildlife, and the thornless stems make the plant a rare greenbrier safe to plant beside a path. Give sandy, acidic, well-drained soil and part shade, and let the mat fill in slowly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoto courtesy of Alan Cressler.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057997418611,"sku":"SMIL-PUMI-01G","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/SmilaxpumilaAlanCresslerWoodlanders1.jpg?v=1749146722"},{"product_id":"thelypteris-kunthii","title":"Thelypteris kunthii","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe southern shield fern carries a longer pedigree than most ferns in cultivation. The type specimen was collected by Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland near Cumanacoa, in the cloud-shrouded country around Caripe in northeastern Venezuela, during their five-year expedition through the equinoctial Americas. Decades later the German botanist Carl Sigismund Kunth, Humboldt's assistant in Paris and the man who would spend years describing the ten thousand and more specimens the explorers shipped home, became the namesake when Nicaise Auguste Desvaux formally described the species in 1827 as Nephrodium kunthii. C.V. Morton moved the fern into Thelypteris in 1967, and recent molecular work (Fawcett and Smith, 2021) has shifted the name again into Pelazoneuron, though the older binomial remains the one in common horticultural use.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is also one of the most adaptable native ferns in the American South. The range runs from the fall line in the Carolinas across the Gulf Coast to east Texas, and on through the Caribbean and Mesoamerica into northern South America, essentially tracking the warm, humid, summer-rich half of the New World. In the wild the fern turns up on shaded streambanks, in rocky woodland, along sinkhole walls, and in the soft alluvial soils of bottomland forest. The fronds are pale, almost sea-green as they emerge in spring, finely cut, slightly triangular in outline, and rise in upright, arching clumps to three feet, occasionally four in rich ground. They are deciduous in the Upper South, going bronze at first frost and disappearing by mid-winter, then unfurling fresh in April.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe southern shield fern travels by both short and long creeping rhizomes, so that a single plant will, given a few seasons, become a colony. This is the rare fern that genuinely earns the word groundcover, soft, continuous, and self-knitting, yet not aggressive enough to overrun a planting. The Southern Living article that first sent gardeners looking for the fern in the 1990s suggested the plant could take full sun, which holds in the deeper South, provided the soil stays consistently moist.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWoodlanders plants ours in shade or semi-shade with rich, humusy soil and steady water through the first season, and recommends the same. Deer pass the fronds by, and the fern holds slopes near water exceptionally well. Pair the southern shield fern with hosta, heuchera, woodland phlox, trillium, and native azaleas, or let the colony run beneath high-pruned hardwoods as a clean green floor.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058002530419,"sku":"THEL-KUNT-01Q","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/ThelypteriskunthiiSAWasowskiWoodlanders1.jpg?v=1750347986"},{"product_id":"thelypteris-acuminata","title":"Thelypteris acuminata","description":"\u003cp\u003eThelypteris acuminata is a handsome evergreen fern from the woodlands of Japan and eastern Asia, grown for glossy green fronds that arch softly and hold their color through the year. Unlike the many deciduous ferns that vanish in winter, this species keeps a steady, structural presence in the shaded garden, one of the reasons the plant is prized where an evergreen fern is wanted.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe finely divided, pinnately compound fronds rise and arch from a slowly creeping rhizome, so that a single plant knits gradually into a soft, continuous colony rather than a lone clump. That gentle, running habit makes the fern a fine, self-knitting groundcover for shade, filling the spaces between larger woodland plants without overwhelming them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA member of the marsh-fern family, Thelypteridaceae, the species belongs to a large, worldwide group of ferns of moist woods and stream margins. The Woodlanders stock carries a small pedigree of its own: this fern was sourced originally from the United States National Arboretum.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrow Thelypteris acuminata in part to full shade in moist, fertile, humus-rich soil, at the front of a shaded border, along a woodland path, among hostas and hellebores, or as an evergreen green floor beneath high-limbed trees. The arching fronds pair beautifully with bolder-leaved shade companions, and deer generally leave the foliage alone. Give steady moisture and shelter from hot sun and drying wind.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058002727027,"sku":"THEL-ACUM-01G","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/23621CBE-3729-4BD8-A4BB-E9476E91DEC5.jpg?v=1762310590"},{"product_id":"trachelospermum-jasminoides-var-pubescens-madison","title":"Trachelospermum jasminoides var. pubescens 'Madison'","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Madison' is the cold-hardy Confederate jasmine, the selection that carries the beloved evergreen vine a full zone north of where the tribe usually stops. Vigorous and twining, with glossy dark leaves and the powerfully fragrant, white, star-shaped flowers that make star jasmine famous, this form has proved hardy into USDA zone 7, well beyond the reach of the standard Trachelospermum jasminoides.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plant came to Woodlanders through the former Cedar Lane Farms Nursery in Madison, Georgia, where the selection proved markedly more cold-tolerant than typical Confederate jasmine, and is almost certainly the hairy-leaved variety, var. pubescens. Trachelospermum jasminoides is native to China and Japan, a self-clinging evergreen climber of the dogbane family, Apocynaceae; the name jasminoides, jasmine-like, records the scent and the starry flowers rather than a true kinship with the jasmines, and the Confederate name is variously traced to the Malay Confederation and to the American South, where the vine is so loved.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeyond the garden, star jasmine has a long medicinal life in East Asia. The dried stems, known in traditional Chinese medicine as luo shi teng and recorded in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, have been decocted to dispel wind-damp and ease rheumatic and joint pain, backache, and sore throat, a use shared in Korea and Japan and now studied for anti-inflammatory activity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, grow 'Madison' against a fence, trellis, arbor, or post for the twining stems to climb, or let the vine spread as a dense evergreen groundcover on a bank. Site where the powerful evening fragrance can be caught, near a path, a door, or a seat, give good, well-drained soil in sun to part shade, and enjoy a Confederate jasmine that holds its evergreen leaves and its scent where the common form would freeze. One of the best evergreen vines for the Upper South.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058005217395,"sku":"TRAC-JASM-PUBE-MADI-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-861.jpg?v=1720141487"},{"product_id":"trachelospermum-jasminoides-variegata","title":"Trachelospermum jasminoides 'Variegata'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis variegated form of Confederate jasmine, or star jasmine, is grown as much for the foliage as the flowers. Each leathery, evergreen leaf is bordered and splashed with creamy white, often flushed pink in cool weather, and the leaves run larger than on most forms of Trachelospermum jasminoides, so the vine reads as a soft, marbled cloud of green and cream on a fence or trellis even out of bloom.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn late spring and summer the familiar white, star-shaped flowers open along the twining stems, sweetly and powerfully fragrant, and give way to long, slender, paired seed pods. Trachelospermum jasminoides is native to China and Japan, a self-clinging evergreen climber of the dogbane family, Apocynaceae; the name jasminoides, jasmine-like, records the scent and the starry flowers rather than a true kinship with the jasmines.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe species carries a long medicinal history in East Asia. The dried stems, known in traditional Chinese medicine as luo shi teng and listed in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, have been decocted to dispel wind-damp and ease rheumatic and joint pain, backache, and sore throat, a use shared in Korea and Japan and now studied for anti-inflammatory activity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, grow the variegated star jasmine on an arbor, trellis, or fence, or as a bright evergreen groundcover, in good, well-drained soil and a semi-shaded to sunny spot, with irrigation through dry spells. The cream-marbled foliage lights a shaded corner and reads beautifully against darker leaves, while the summer fragrance earns the vine a place near a path, a door, or a seat. Best in the milder regions of the warm South.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058005250163,"sku":"TRAC-JASM-VARI-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-862.jpg?v=1720141490"},{"product_id":"trachelospermum-sp","title":"Trachelospermum sp.","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is a Trachelospermum, one of the star jasmines, offered here as an unnamed selection. Like others in the genus, the plant is a twining, self-clinging evergreen vine with glossy, leathery, dark-green leaves that clothe a fence, trellis, or arbor in dense green through the year and take readily to clipping into a clean, structured cover.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe star jasmines are evergreen climbers of the dogbane family, Apocynaceae, native to China, Japan, and neighboring parts of Asia, grown across the warm South for handsome foliage and, in most forms, small, star-shaped, powerfully fragrant flowers in late spring and summer. As an unnamed selection, this vine is expected to carry the white, sweetly scented star flowers typical of the genus, though the exact form is uncertain.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, set the Trachelospermum against a fence, wall, trellis, arbor, or post for the twining stems to climb, or let the vine run as a dense evergreen groundcover on a bank or slope. The plant grows at a steady pace, takes to shearing for a tidy screen or a controlled groundcover, and adapts to a range of soils in sun or part shade in a mild climate.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive good, well-drained soil, sun to part shade, and water through establishment, and this star jasmine will settle into a versatile, evergreen presence for a fence line, a shaded wall, or a bank in need of clean, year-round green. Best in the milder regions of the warm South.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058005479539,"sku":"TRAC-SP-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/FullSizeRender_93d904cb-8b0d-4927-8527-131f78265a71.heic?v=1747250665"},{"product_id":"trachelospermum-jasminoides-mandianum","title":"Trachelospermum jasminoides \"Mandianum\"","description":"\u003cp\u003eConfederate jasmine, or star jasmine, is one of the best-loved evergreen vines of the warm South, prized for glossy dark leaves and clouds of small, star-shaped, intensely fragrant flowers. The common form wears white blooms, but this selection, which Woodlanders offers as 'Mandianum' and which may be the cultivar 'Star of Toscana', opens flowers in shades of creamy to clear yellow, an unusual and welcome color in the tribe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTrachelospermum jasminoides is native to China and Japan, a twining, self-supporting climber that clothes a fence, trellis, arbor, or post in dense, evergreen green and, in late spring and summer, in fragrant bloom. The name jasminoides means jasmine-like, for the scent and the star-shaped flowers, though the plant belongs not to the true jasmines but to the dogbane family, Apocynaceae. The Confederate name is variously traced to the Malay Confederation and to the American South, where the vine is so beloved.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeyond the garden, star jasmine has a long medicinal life in East Asia. The dried stems, known in traditional Chinese medicine as luo shi teng and recorded in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, have been decocted to ease rheumatic and joint pain and to soothe a sore throat, a use shared in Korea and Japan and now studied for anti-inflammatory activity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, give 'Mandianum' good, well-drained soil and a sunny to partly shaded spot, and set the vine against a fence, trellis, arbor, or post for the twining stems to climb. Site where the powerful evening fragrance can be caught, near a path, a door, or a seat, and let the yellow-flowered star jasmine bring both scent and an uncommon color to a warm-climate garden.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058005577843,"sku":"TRAC-JASM-MAND-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1550.jpg?v=1720141500"},{"product_id":"vaccinium-crassifolium-wells-delight","title":"Vaccinium crassifolium 'Well's Delight'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe creeping blueberry is the ground-hugging cousin of the fruiting kinds, a low, evergreen, native groundcover of the Carolina coastal plain that trades height for reach. 'Well's Delight' is a North Carolina State University selection from the southeastern corner of that state, named for the late Dr. B.W. Wells, the pioneering North Carolina ecologist, and set apart by small, shiny leaves even finer than the usual for the species. The botanical name crassifolium means thick-leaved, for the firm little evergreen leaves that line the trailing stems.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRather than a fruit crop, this is a plant grown for cover and texture: a dense, glossy, dark green mat that turns bronze and burgundy through winter cold. Small, white to pink, bell-shaped flowers stud the mat in spring, feeding early bees, and are followed by small dark blue berries that the birds take, edible enough for a passing nibble though never the harvest of a true blueberry bush.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the wild, creeping blueberry runs along the moist, sandy, acid ground of the Carolina coastal plain, where the water table sits high or a slow seepage keeps the soil damp, though the roots never sit in flood. That preference makes the plant a natural evergreen groundcover for a sandy bank, the front of an acid border, a pond-edge slope, or a native and pollinator planting, knitting slowly into a fine, weed-smothering carpet.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive 'Well's Delight' full sun to light shade and the moist, sandy, acid soil the plant favors, and the mat fills in steadily with almost no care. Pair the groundcover with blueberries, pieris, native azaleas, and other acid-loving companions, and let a drift carry the ground where turf or a coarser cover would look heavy. A quiet, refined native that does a great deal of work for a plant so close to the soil.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058007576691,"sku":"VACC-CRAS-WELL-DELI-01G","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-543.jpg?v=1720141582"},{"product_id":"viola-walteri","title":"Viola walteri","description":"\u003cp\u003eA native violet grown as much for the leaf as the flower. Viola walteri, Walter's violet, belongs to the violet family, Violaceae, and honors the British-born botanist Thomas Walter, whose Flora Caroliniana of 1788 was the first flora of the American Southeast. The prostrate blue violet ranges in the wild from Texas east to Florida and north to Virginia and Ohio, threading the floors of moist deciduous woodlands and shaded rocky ledges.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe foliage is the quiet charm. Heart-shaped leaves, silvered and softly veined above, carry a deep purple flush on the undersides, and the low, creeping stems root as they run to knit a dense, even mat only a few inches tall. Partly evergreen through mild winters, the leaves hold color when most groundcovers have retreated.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn early spring, small lavender-blue flowers rise just above the mat, a soft seasonal contrast to the patterned leaves. Like other violets, Walter's violet serves as a larval host for fritillary butterflies, whose caterpillars feed on the foliage, so a planting earns a place in the wildlife garden as well as the ornamental one.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSet the prostrate blue violet as a shade groundcover along a woodland path, at the front of a shaded border, between stepping stones, or woven among ferns, wild ginger, and other shade companions in moist, well-drained soil. The creeping habit fills in steadily without overwhelming neighbors, and the purple-backed foliage reads beautifully at close range. A refined native for the shaded garden.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058011345011,"sku":"VIOL-WALT-01G","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-757.jpg?v=1720141732"},{"product_id":"vitex-rotundifolia","title":"Vitex rotundifolia","description":"\u003cp\u003eA tough, salt-defying seaside groundcover with a serious caveat. Vitex rotundifolia, best known as beach vitex, is a low, prostrate, trailing shrub of the mint family, native to the coasts of eastern Asia, the Pacific islands, and Australia, where the plant binds shifting sand along the shore. Rounded, blue-green leaves about two inches across clothe the running stems, aromatic and slightly spicy when crushed, and spikes of bright lavender-blue flowers open in late summer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat vigor comes with a warning. Introduced to the southeastern United States for dune stabilization, beach vitex escaped cultivation and now overruns native beach plant communities along the Carolina coast, where the shrub is regulated and actively eradicated in several localities. Plant beach vitex only where local law allows and never near a natural shoreline. Inland, away from the coast, the plant does not appear to pose the same threat.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe dried fruit has a long place in East Asian herbal traditions, where beach vitex and the related Vitex trifolia are the source of the medicine known in Chinese as man jing zi, or Viticis Fructus, used to ease headaches and clear what traditional practitioners call wind-heat. See the medicinal notes below for the traditional record and the usual cautions.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere planting is appropriate and legal, beach vitex offers real toughness: full sun, sandy well-drained soil, drought, salt spray, and deer are all taken in stride, and the fast, spreading habit knits an informal groundcover on a hot, dry bank. Site with care and room to run, prune hard in early spring to hold the plant in bounds, and gather stray fruit where any escape is a concern.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058011738227,"sku":"VITE-ROTU-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1070.jpg?v=1720141749"},{"product_id":"xanthorhiza-simplicissima","title":"Xanthorhiza simplicissima","description":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Bartram collected Xanthorhiza simplicissima from the Carolina mountains sometime before 1776 and brought the plant back to his famous Philadelphia garden, which tells you two things: that yellowroot has been in cultivation for as long as this country has existed, and that people who know plants have always recognized something worth paying attention to here. The Cherokee had known the plant far longer, using the roots, sliced open to reveal a vivid, almost electric chrome yellow, as a dye, a bitter tonic, and a medicine for ailments from mouth sores to stomach complaints. The active compound is berberine, the same antimicrobial alkaloid found in goldenseal, and the roots produce berberine in striking quantity. Xanthorhiza is Greek for yellow root, and the name is no metaphor.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYellowroot is a great deal more than a first glance suggests. Technically a shrub, and the only genus in a small family within the Ranunculaceae, the buttercup clan, the plant surprises anyone who meets those parsley-like compound leaves for the first time. In early spring, before the foliage fully extends, drooping panicles of tiny purplish-brown flowers with yellow centers appear, not showy from a distance but worth crouching down for. The summer character is the foliage: bright, finely textured, fern-like in effect, forming a dense low canopy that suppresses weeds and holds composure through the heat. Then autumn arrives, and the leaves move through a full spectrum of maroon, scarlet, orange, and gold, a fall display that looks borrowed from a much showier plant.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe plant spreads steadily by underground rhizome, tolerates shade that defeats most flowering shrubs, handles wet soils, and, once established, reasonable drought. Four centuries of cultivation, a Bartram connection, a living ethnobotanical record, and fall color worth photographing. The argument makes itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhotos courtesy of Julie Makin and Alan Cressler.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058013606003,"sku":"XANT-SIMP-01G","price":18.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Xanthorhizasimplicissima-AlanCressler.jpg?v=1738952650"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/collections\/Conradina_verticilla_l7Q3C95pblex.jpg?v=1773667563","url":"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/collections\/groundcover-shrubs.oembed?page=2","provider":"Woodlanders","version":"1.0","type":"link"}