Magnolias
18 plants in this collection
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![Magnolia ashei Ashe magnolia, huge tropical-looking leaves on a compact native shrub]()
Magnolia liliflora nigra x spengeri diva 'Spectrum' $27.00 /Spectrum Magnolia
- Zones 5–8
- 30–40 ft
Reference plantView details →![Magnolia macrophylla bigleaf magnolia, enormous simple leaves with silvery undersides]()
Magnolia virginiana australis 'Santa Rosa' $28.00 /Evergreen Sweetbay 'Santa Rosa'
- Zones 7–9
- 30–40 ft
Magnolia virginiana australis 'Woodlanders Evangeline' $33.00 /Evergreen Sweetbay 'Woodlanders Evangeline'
- Zones 5–9
- 20–35 ft
Reference plantView details →![Magnolia virginiana, sweetbay magnolia, a fragrant native tree offered by Woodlanders.]()
Magnolia virginiana var. pumila $28.00 /Dwarf Sweetbay
- Zones 6–10
- 8–10 ft
Reference plantView details →
About the Magnolias Collection
Magnolias are the great-flowered trees and shrubs of an ancient lineage, blooming since before the first bee and pollinated, still, largely by beetles that clamber through the waxy petals. The genus spans stately evergreens hung with leathery leaves and dinner-plate summer flowers, and deciduous kinds that open goblet or star-shaped blooms on bare branches while the rest of the garden still sleeps. Across all of them the flower is the draw: big, often deeply fragrant, and unmistakable.
In the landscape magnolias are specimen plants in the fullest sense. A single tree, sited where the bloom and form can be seen, becomes the centerpiece of a garden and the marker of a season. The evergreen kinds give year-round structure, shade, and a glossy backdrop; the deciduous kinds stop everything for a week or two of early flower before the rest of the garden has woken. Either way, these are plants to be placed with intention and lived with for a lifetime.
We grow magnolias because few plants give so much for a single, well-chosen specimen, and because the genus reaches deep into the Southern landscape and its history. Several are regional natives, at home in local soils and valuable to wildlife: the great summer flowers feed beetles and other early pollinators, and the cone-like fruits carry seed for birds into autumn.
Give them room for a mature crown, deep, rich, well-drained soil, and a site sheltered from the hardest frosts, since early flowers can catch a late freeze. Find more of the framework in our Canopy Trees, evergreen company in our Conifers, and regional kin in our Southeastern Natives.
