The plants that come back. Herbaceous perennials rise from the crown each spring, flower through the warm months, and retreat to the ground in winter, returning larger the year after. They are the flowering heart of the border, the long-term investment that repays a gardener season after season.
Canna flaccida is the wild golden canna of the Southern coastal plain, a native perennial with the broad, light green, tropical-looking leaves of the genus and large soft yellow flowers held above them in summer. Where the heavy garden cannas read as bedding, this species keeps a looser, wilder grace, the petals thin and almost orchid-like, opening in the morning and lasting a day.
The turtlehead is named twice over for things that go quiet. The genus Chelone is the Greek word for tortoise, after a nymph who mocked the marriage of Zeus and Hera and was turned, for her insolence, into a creature that carries her house and holds her tongue; one look at the flower, a hinged, swollen, pink-and-gaping thing that seems about to either speak or bite, and you see why the name stuck. The species honors John Lyon, the Scottish plant hunter who worked the southern Appalachians in the footsteps of Bartram and Michaux. Lyon collected this turtlehead somewhere in the mountains around 1812 without recording quite where, noting only in his catalog that here was a new species, and a beautiful one; his friend Frederick Pursh later pinned Lyon's name to the plant. Lyon did not have long to enjoy the honor, dying in 1814 in the same southern mountains that had made his name. The plant has fared better. Chelone lyonii grows wild along streambanks and seeps in the high southern Appalachians, and 'Hot Lips' is the selection that turned the color up, deeper rose-pink flowers over foliage that emerges with a bronze cast. The flowers arrive in late summer and run into fall, which is the real gift, holding color in the moist and shaded corners just as the rest of the garden tires. Only a bumblebee is strong enough to force the blooms open, so a planting in flower comes with a low percussion of bees muscling in and backing out. Give them wet feet and a little shade and there is very little that does a damp, difficult spot this gracefully, or this late.
This very rare aster, now placed in the genus Eurybia, is a true Florida endemic, native only to the moist pine flatwoods of the lower Apalachicola River. The plant is a botanical oddity: the clumping, foot-tall foliage is narrow, stiff, and grass-like, so unlike the leafy stems of an ordinary aster that a passerby might take the clump for a tuft of sedge. From late spring into early summer, slender flower stems rise above the leaves carrying clusters of inch-wide lavender-purple daisies, each ringing a small yellow eye.
Penstemon digitalis is one of the most adaptable of the native beardtongues, a clump-forming perennial of moist meadows, prairies, and open woods across the eastern and central United States. 'Husker Red', selected at the University of Nebraska and named Perennial Plant of the Year in 1996, keeps all the toughness of the wild species but wears it in deep wine-red: a basal rosette of glossy maroon foliage that holds color from spring through fall.
Phlox carolina 'Kim' is among the best of the Carolina phloxes, a selection found by the plantswoman Jan Midgley in Alabama and grown ever since for good health and honest flower power. From a low, tidy clump of narrow, almost lime-green leaves rise sturdy stems eighteen to twenty-four inches tall, each carrying an open, airy cluster of pale to bright pink flowers, five petals apiece, hovering just above the foliage from late spring into early summer. Where the border phloxes so often finish the season spotted and tired, 'Kim' holds clean, fresh foliage from spring straight through fall.
Physostegia correllii, Correll's obedient plant, is a rare and handsome member of the mint family, a robust, upright, somewhat succulent perennial rising from thick, spreading rhizomes. Among the false dragonheads the species stands out for unusually dark, glossy green leaves and cool purplish-pink flowers streaked and spotted with darker purple, an inch long and packed into dense terminal spikes.
Where blunt mountain mint is all broad silver, Pycnanthemum tenuifolium is the slender cousin, a fine-textured native built from wiry stems and narrow, almost needle-thin leaves. From midsummer into early fall the plant clouds over with flat-topped clusters of tiny white to pale lavender flowers, faintly purple-speckled, and the effect at a distance is a low haze of bloom. What the flowers lack in size they make up in draw: bees, small butterflies, wasps, and beneficial insects work the nectar in numbers that make narrowleaf mountain mint one of the most valuable pollinator plants of the eastern flora.
Hardiness
Zones 6–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
2–3 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
digestive health, general wellness, topical applications
Rudbeckia fulgida var. fulgida is the true orange coneflower, the wild species that stands behind the famous 'Goldsturm', quieter, finer, and later to bloom than that celebrated garden child. From a low clump of dark, roughly hairy leaves rise branching stems two to three feet tall, each ending in a small golden daisy about two inches across, the deep yellow rays set around a low dome of brown-black. Where many of the black-eyed Susans have blazed and faded by August, the orange coneflower is only getting started, carrying many small flowers from late summer well into October.
Stokesia laevis is one of those rare native perennials that marries toughness with elegance, a plant that has stood its ground in the Southeastern pinelands for ages yet looks as though it belongs in the most refined cottage border. Native to the sandy, open woods and pine savannas of the Carolinas, Georgia, and the Gulf coastal plain, this Stokes' aster rises each spring from tidy, semi-evergreen rosettes of glossy leaves before sending up broad, fringed flowers in shades of sky blue, lavender, or soft cream.
Symphyotrichum oblongifolium, the aromatic aster, saves the best of the season for last. Long after most perennials have folded, this tough native throws up a low, spreading mound of stiff, well-branched stems and buries the whole clump under small violet-blue daisies, each lit with a bright gold eye, from early fall well into November. The show arrives just as the garden goes quiet, and the flowers hum with the last bees and butterflies of the year.
Threadleaf bluestar is grown for two seasons at once: a haze of soft, powder-blue stars in late spring, and a billow of fine, needle-thin foliage that turns a blazing clear gold in fall. Native to the Ouachita Mountains of central Arkansas, Amsonia hubrichtii forms a large, dense, shrub-like clump of upright stems clothed in those threadlike leaves, and the autumn color alone earns a place in any sunny border.
Dwarf bluestar is the compact, well-behaved member of the clan, a tidy mound of upright stems and soft green leaves topped in late spring with clusters of powder-blue, star-shaped flowers. Often treated as a low form of the eastern bluestar, Amsonia montana stays small and shapely, a fine choice where the taller bluestars would sprawl.
Eastern bluestar is the bluestar most gardeners know, a robust native perennial with broader, willowy oval leaves and the clear blue, star-shaped flowers that name the genus, carried in clusters at the stem tips in spring. Amsonia tabernaemontana grows happily in deep, moist soil in part shade, and rewards almost any reasonable site with bloom and easy good health.
Few spring sights stir the woodland gardener like wild columbine in bloom. Aquilegia canadensis hangs nodding red-and-yellow bells, spurred and lantern-like, over lacy blue-green foliage, catching the low light of April along forest edges, rocky outcrops, and Appalachian coves where the plant has grown for ages. The eastern red columbine, or simply wild columbine, is among the most beloved of native spring wildflowers.
The white-flowered form of swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata 'Ice Ballet' carries the same upright, well-mannered habit as the species but trades rosy pink for clusters of pure, cool white, held atop sturdy three-to-four-foot stems through summer. The effect is fresh and luminous in a moist border, and just as useful to wildlife.
Butterfly weed is the orange star of the summer meadow, a strong-growing native perennial of eastern North America and a longtime favorite of gardeners. Flower color ranges from clear yellow to nearly red, but the typical Asclepias tuberosa blazes a vivid orange that butterflies, and the eye, find from across the garden.
Hardiness
Zones 4–9
Light
Full Sun
Height
12–24 in.
Spread
12–18 in.
Bloom
Orange
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
respiratory support, digestive health, pain relief, reproductive health
Smooth aster is one of the cleanest and most dependable of the fall natives, and 'Bluebird' is among the best forms. Aster laevis 'Bluebird' builds an upright, vase-shaped clump of smooth, blue-green foliage, then opens, in late summer and fall, sprays of violet-blue daisies centered in gold, a generous late feast for bees and butterflies as the season winds down.
Aromatic aster is the toughest and most fragrant of the fall asters, and 'Raydon's Favorite' is the classic selection. Aster oblongifolius 'Raydon's Favorite' forms a dense, rounded mound of small leaves that release a clean, balsam-like scent when brushed, and in early to mid fall vanishes under a haze of lavender-blue, gold-centered daisies.
Baptisia alba, white wild indigo, is a striking native perennial of tall spires of white, pea-like flowers over deep blue-green foliage. Native to the eastern and central United States, the species carries a rich history as a dye plant, used by Native American peoples and early settlers as a substitute for true indigo, and the genus name, from the Greek bapto, to dip, records that role.
When Woodlanders began in 1980, this was about the only Baptisia known to gardeners; we went on to introduce many of the species that have since become popular garden perennials. Baptisia australis, blue wild indigo, is a long-lived native, essentially a prairie plant of open glades on limestone soil, with handsome olive-green compound leaves topped in spring by spikes of bright indigo-blue, pea-like flowers.
