The swamp azalea, Rhododendron viscosum, ordinarily opens white; this selection breaks pink. 'Roseum' is a rose-flushed form of the familiar native, chosen and introduced by Woodlanders from a plant of Aiken County, South Carolina provenance, a home-ground selection that carries the sweet, clove-like fragrance of the species in a warmer color. The swamp azalea ranges widely across the eastern United States, from the Gulf Coast north into New England, threading the wet margins of swamps, bogs, and stream banks where few other flowering shrubs will follow.
The glaucous swamp azalea is a native deciduous shrub of the wetland South and the eastern seaboard, a blue-leaved form of Rhododendron viscosum, the widespread swamp azalea that ranges from the Gulf Coast north into New England. The variety glaucum sets the plant apart with foliage washed in a soft blue-green, most striking on the leaf undersides, which flash pale as a breeze turns them. Where many shrubs falter, this azalea thrives in the consistently moist, even boggy ground of swamps, marshes, and stream banks.
'Koromo Shikibu' is the spider azalea, and there is nothing else in the genus quite like the flower. Instead of the usual funnel, each bloom splits into narrow, strap-like petals that spread apart like the legs of a starfish or a spider, lavender to purplish-pink, spotted darker at the base, and carried in such profusion in spring that the whole shrub seems to shimmer. Once seen, the flower is not forgotten.
A spontaneous hybrid, probably including Rhododendron alabamense, R. canescens, and R. flammeum, and blooming in mid-spring. Woodlanders regularly offers several numbered selections in our "Pastel Series," which we introduced, and this is number four. A happy blend of colors that adds interest to any garden.
'Addison' began as a chance seedling of the Alabama azalea, Rhododendron alabamense, and grew into something none of the parents quite predicted. Surely a hybrid, though the exact parentage remains unknown, the plant carries large, dense, dome-shaped terminal clusters that blend shades of yellow, pink, and white in a single truss, a multicolored effect striking enough that the selection first went by the name 'Stunning'. Charles Webb, a good friend of Woodlanders, spotted and selected the seedling in Florida, and the plant now carries the name of one of his young granddaughters.
This hardy hybrid azalea is a piece of Woodlanders history, a deliberate cross made by the nursery's late founder, Robert Mackintosh. Mackintosh crossed the native roseshell azalea, Rhododendron prinophyllum, with the old hybrid group known as R. x kosterana, or mollis azalea, and the result is an upright, large-flowered deciduous shrub carrying bold orange trusses each marked with a splash of yellow.
'Casille' arose spontaneously, a chance hybrid among three of the southeastern native azaleas: the white, lemon-scented Alabama azalea, Rhododendron alabamense; the fragrant pink Piedmont azalea, R. canescens; and the fiery, unscented Oconee azalea, R. flammeum. From that three-way mingling came a deciduous shrub that blooms in mid-spring in a lively pastel blend, the flowers shifting through pink, white, and soft yellow with a subtle sweetness inherited from the fragrant parents. An exclusive Woodlanders introduction, the plant was named by George Mitchell for his wife.
A rare evergreen shrub or small tree from southern China and the neighboring subtropics, Rhodoleia championii is a connoisseur's plant, dramatic in bloom, refined in habit, and quietly excellent the year round. Thick, glossy, rounded leaves cloak the plant in deep green, and their softly glaucous, blue-gray undersides catch the light and every passing breeze, giving even the out-of-flower plant a handsome, layered presence.
Jetbead is an old-fashioned, exceptionally tough deciduous shrub of the rose family, forming an open, multi-stemmed mound roughly three to six feet tall and four to nine feet wide on arching gray-brown stems. The opposite, sharply toothed leaves break very early in spring, and four-petaled white flowers about two inches across open at the shoot tips in May and June. Clusters of three or four glossy black drupes follow in fall and hang on well into winter, the shining beads that give jetbead the common name.
Fragrant 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.
Hardiness
Zones 3–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
4–6 ft.
Spread
4–6 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
digestive health, topical applications, general wellness
Rohdea japonica, the sacred lily or Nippon lily, is a bold, slow, tufted evergreen perennial grown above all for foliage, and this selection carries the darkest leaves of all, an almost black, glossy green that anchors a shaded planting through the whole year and lights up a winter landscape when little else holds. Rather sizeable red berries ripen in tight clusters, half-hidden at the base of the leaves, a quiet second season for anyone who looks closely.
The pink Cherokee rose is a big, vigorous, early-flowering climber grown for one glorious effect: large, single, silvery-pink flowers, up to four inches across, each a simple five-petaled saucer lit by a central boss of gold stamens. Where the true Cherokee rose blooms white, this one blooms in clear, soft pink, and opens early, in the first warm reach of spring, ahead of most roses.
The swamp rose is one of the few roses that truly loves wet feet, a tall, graceful native shrub of the eastern United States that grows wild along pond edges, streambanks, and in the low, seasonally flooded ground where garden roses would drown. Reaching four to eight feet on arching, sparingly thorny canes, the plant opens fragrant, single, clear pink flowers through the summer, each a simple five-petaled saucer around a boss of gold stamens, a soft, untamed beauty far from the tidy hybrid tea.
Vigorous spreading, deciduous hybrid rose climber also known as 'Spanish Beauty'. It has large pink flowers that are red in bud. It blooms in the spring. Its foliage is dark green and relatively free of common rose problems. I can grow in full sun or on a north wall. Heavy petal flowers tend to nod which is advantage in roses usually seen from below. This hybrid by Pedro Dot of Spain was introduced in 1927.
Rubus coronarius, often called the Easter Rose, is one of those plants that gently refuses categorization. Botanically the species sits squarely among the brambles, a blackberry relative, yet in bloom the shrub bears no resemblance to anything prickly or wild. In place of the usual bramble flower comes a flush of large, fully double white blooms that read far more like heirloom roses than raspberries, each one softly luminous and timed, in the mildest springs, to open around Easter, from which the common name follows.
Rubus 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.
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.
Rudbeckia nitida is a tall, luminous coneflower that trades the coarse hairiness of the common black-eyed Susans for smooth, glossy, dark green leaves and hairless stems, the shining foliage that gives the species a name. From a leafy base rise slender stems three to five feet tall, each carrying a large yellow daisy whose soft rays droop back from a raised, greenish-brown central cone, blooming through the heat of mid to late summer.
Ruellia caroliniensis, the Carolina wild petunia, is a modest, long-blooming native that carries far more ecological weight than the quiet flowers suggest. From early summer into fall, a steady succession of lavender to violet-purple trumpets, each an inch or two across and lasting only a single day, opens along upright stems a foot or two high, replaced faithfully the next morning so that the plant is seldom out of bloom for months on end.
Ruscus aculeatus, Butcher's Broom, is a low evergreen shrub of the asparagus family, native to the woodlands of southern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, and reaching north into the milder parts of the British Isles. What look like glossy, spine-tipped leaves are not leaves at all but flattened stems called cladodes, which take over the work of photosynthesis while the true leaves are reduced to tiny scales. The generic name comes from the Latin ruscum, the old word for a butcher's broom, and the epithet aculeatus means prickled, for the sharp point that tips each cladode.
