Monarda fistulosa, wild bergamot, is one of the great native perennials of the North American prairie, a hardy, aromatic member of the mint family loved for showy heads of lavender-pink and for a fragrance like oregano crossed with mint. The species grows wild in meadows, prairies, and open woods across most of the continent, and brings both vivid summer color and a deep well of history to the garden.
The bayberry candle is one of those traditions so old it has become purely symbolic, burned at Christmas for luck, the scent faint and slightly waxy and unlike anything paraffin has managed to replicate in three centuries of trying. Most people who burn one have no idea what plant produced it, or that the plant is still out there, growing in sandy pocosins and coastal flats from New Jersey to the Gulf, doing quiet work in the margins of the southeastern landscape. That plant is Morella caroliniensis.
Morella pumila is the dwarf waxmyrtle, a low, native evergreen that keeps everything gardeners love about the common wax myrtle, aromatic foliage, waxy berries, and a tough constitution, and shrinks it all to knee height. Native to the frequently burned pinelands of the southern United States, the plant is an adaptation to that fiery world, staying small and spreading slowly into dense patches and colonies by underground runners.
Morella pumila 'Willow Leaf' is a distinctive, fine-leaved form of the native dwarf waxmyrtle, selected for narrow, elongated, willow-like leaves that give the low shrub an unusually elegant, airy texture rarely seen in the species. Like the wild plant, this is a low, spreading, colony-forming evergreen of the fire-adapted pinelands of the southeastern United States, once listed as Myrica pusilla and now placed in the genus Morella.
The red mulberry, Morus rubra, is the eastern woodlands' own mulberry, a medium to large deciduous tree native across the eastern United States from New England to Texas. The genus name Morus is simply the old Latin word for mulberry, and rubra, red, points less to the ripe fruit, which darkens to near black, than to the reddish cast of the young growth. Broad, heart-shaped, sandpaper-rough leaves clothe a wide, rounded crown, and where a female tree grows the summer branches hang heavy with blackberry-like fruit.
Hardiness
Zones 4–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
40–60 ft.
Spread
25–35 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
digestive health, topical applications, general wellness
Few native grasses put on a show like Muhlenbergia capillaris. For most of the year pink muhly is a modest, upright tuft of fine, wiry, dark green blades, easy to overlook. Then, in the shortening days of autumn, the whole clump erupts into a haze of tiny flowers, an airy cloud of pink to rose-red that seems to hover a foot above the foliage and glows when backlit by low sun. Massed in a drift, the effect is one of the most spectacular in the fall garden.
Muhly grass is a distinctive ornamental, a wiry upright bunch grass that spends most of the year as an unremarkable tuft of narrow foliage and then, in late summer and fall, throws up a haze of flowering panicles so fine and so numerous that the whole plant appears to be smoking. The normal form does this in reddish pink. 'White Cloud' is a rare selection that does it in white, and the effect is entirely different: cooler, more luminous, and startling when backlit by a low sun. Plumes reach three to four feet. Set against a dark background, an evergreen hedge or a stand of pine, the white reads as light rather than as color, and mixed among the ordinary pink form the two together are better than either alone.
Muhlenbergia dumosa, bamboo muhly, is a desert-born grass with the grace of bamboo, drifting like cloud shadow across the canyon floor. From the arid uplands and rocky washes of northern Mexico and southern Arizona, where sun-scorched cliffs and canyon walls shaped the character of the species, bamboo muhly evolved to thrive on dry air and lean soils, and yet carries the fluid elegance of true bamboo, swaying at the faintest breeze.
Every so often a plant does one strange, particular thing so well that the rest of the description turns into footnotes. Musa velutina is one of those. In late summer, from the top of a pseudostem no taller than a person, comes an upright spike of pink bracts and small tubular flowers, and behind the flowers a cluster of velvety pink bananas about three inches long. Then, when ripe, the fruits peel themselves. The skins split into curling strips and fold back on the stalk, exposing white flesh and a knot of hard black seeds, unprompted, in full view of whoever happens to be standing on the patio.
Southern wax myrtle is one of the hardest-working native evergreens of the Southeast, and 'Emperor' is a nursery selection of that adaptable shrub. Fast-growing and densely branched, wax myrtle forms a large evergreen shrub or a small multi-trunked tree, clothed in narrow, olive-green leaves that release a clean, spicy, bayberry scent when crushed. The plant thrives where many shrubs fail, from wet ground to dry sand, in sun or shade, on the coast or inland. Our propagation material comes from Hopelands Gardens, a few minutes from the nursery here in Aiken, where a grand old specimen still leans at the angle Helene left in 2024, root plate heaved half out of the ground and better than half the trunk buried. The tree has carried on growing from that new posture without missing a season, in a garden that lost old pines, deodar cedars and magnolias outright, which says more about the constitution of wax myrtle than any list of virtues could.
Myrica rubra, the Chinese bayberry or yangmei, is a fruiting evergreen tree from the misty mountains of East Asia, revered for centuries across China and Japan for tangy-sweet berries and an elegant, shapely form. Imagine cherries and cranberries with a botanical lovechild that had the moodiness of a plum and the antioxidant punch of a superfruit, and something close to yangmei would be the result. The plants we grow are female, tissue-cultured clones of a named selection.
Myrtus communis, the true myrtle, is a dense evergreen shrub of the Mediterranean, clothed in small, glossy, aromatic leaves and starry white flowers, and few garden plants carry so much history. Sacred to Aphrodite and to her Roman counterpart Venus, myrtle has stood for love, beauty, and marriage since antiquity, woven into bridal wreaths from ancient Greece to Victorian England, and a sprig from Queen Victoria's own bouquet founded a myrtle whose descendants still supply royal wedding flowers today.
Hardiness
Zones 8–11
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
6–9 ft.
Spread
6–8 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, topical applications, digestive health
The Nagami kumquat is the easiest citrus most gardeners will ever grow, and the only one meant to be eaten peel and all. Clusters of small, oval, sunset-orange fruit hang against dense, glossy evergreen foliage, each one a burst of contrast: a sweet, tender rind wrapped around bright, tart pulp. Pop them whole for a sweet-and-sour snap, candy the rinds, slice them into a salad, or simmer the winter harvest into jewel-toned marmalade.
There is something almost meditative about Nageia nagi. Named from the Japanese word nagi, meaning both calm and to mow down one's troubles, this ancient conifer carries a quiet gravitas few trees can match. At the Nyakuoji Shrine in Kyoto a sacred nagi tree has stood for centuries, believed to cut through hardship and leave peace in its wake, and sprigs of nagi have long passed between lovers as a token of steadfast devotion, the leaves too tough and resilient to tear easily, a metaphor that has endured for a thousand years.
Heavenly bamboo, Nandina domestica, has been a fixture of Southern gardens for generations, though the plant is no kin to bamboo at all, but a member of the barberry family from East Asia. The likeness is in the look: erect, sparingly branched canes carry large, glossy, fern-like compound leaves that flush red and bronze in cold weather, and the whole plant reads light and airy where a solid evergreen would feel heavy. 'Leucocarpa' is an uncommon selection that trades the usual scarlet berries for creamy pale-yellow ones, otherwise much like the familiar form.
Oleander, Nerium oleander, is a large, sun-loving evergreen shrub of the Mediterranean, grown since antiquity for a long, generous summer of bloom. Dark green, leathery, lance-shaped leaves ride in whorls of three along the long, sparingly branched stems, and from late spring well into fall the branch tips carry showy, lightly fragrant flower clusters. 'Double Pink' bears fully double, rose-like flowers in a soft, warm pink.
The hardiest yellow oleander in cultivation, and one of the very few oleanders that come in yellow at all. Of the four hundred and more named cultivars of Nerium oleander, the genus runs naturally to white, pink, and red; yellow is the aberration, and a fully double yellow rarer still. 'Double Yellow' is the old French selection that fixed the color.
Oleander, Nerium oleander, is the great sun-loving evergreen of the Mediterranean, grown since antiquity for a long summer of bloom, with dark green, leathery, lance-shaped leaves in whorls of three along long, sparingly branched stems. 'Hardy Red' is one of the cold-tougher selections, carrying showy, lightly fragrant clusters of bright red flowers from late spring well into fall.
Few shrubs carry as much history as the oleander, grown around the Mediterranean and across the warm world since antiquity. The name Nerium traces to the Greek neros, meaning moist or watery, a nod to the streamsides and dry watercourses where oleander naturally takes hold, while the old name oleander seems to braid together olea, the olive, and the leathery, lance-shaped leaves the two plants share. Those dark green leaves stand in tidy whorls of three along long, sparingly branched stems, giving the shrub a poised, upright architecture even out of flower.
Nerium oleander has been grown around the Mediterranean since antiquity, the name Nerium drawn from the Greek neros, watery, for the streamsides where the shrub grows wild. 'Variegata' brings that ancient toughness together with luminous foliage: narrow, leathery leaves edged in creamy white around a deep green center, held in whorls along the stems so the whole shrub seems lightly frosted even when out of flower.
