Justicia brandegeana, the shrimp plant, is a subtropical evergreen shrub from Mexico, grown the world over for the curious, shrimp-like flower spikes that give the plant its name: arching, overlapping bracts in warm coppery orange, salmon, and rust, from which small white flowers peek like a shrimp's legs. The bracts hold their color for weeks, so a well-grown plant seems always in bloom.
Every so often a plant arrives not from a breeder's bench but from a neighbor's yard, and Lantana camara 'Miss Huff' is one of those happy accidents. The selection was found in cultivation near Athens, Georgia, in the garden of the Miss Huff for whom the plant is named, and introduced to the trade by the former Goodness Grows Nursery. What set this lantana apart was cold tolerance: where most of the tribe sulk and die at the first hard freeze, 'Miss Huff' has proven the hardiest lantana in commerce, with well-established clumps shrugging off brief dips to a few degrees below zero and returning faithfully from the root even in zone 7.
Few late-summer plants command a border like Leonotis leonurus, the lion's ear of the South African veld. Tall square stems, the signature of the mint family, Lamiaceae, rise five feet and more before breaking into tier upon tier of burnt-orange flowers, each whorl circling the stem like a ruff. The velvety, curved tubes are the source of both common names, lion's ear and lion's tail, and the botany agrees: Leonotis comes from the Greek for lion's ear, and leonurus for lion's tail.
Hardiness
Zones 8–11
Light
Full Sun
Height
4–6 ft.
Spread
2–4 ft.
Bloom
Orange
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, pain relief, topical applications, general wellness
This is the white-flowered small Turk's cap, an uncommon and quietly beautiful form of the normally scarlet Malvaviscus drummondii. The flowers keep the familiar furled, never-opening Turk's cap shape, under two inches long and produced steadily through the hot months, but open in clean, soft white rather than red, a cool and unexpected note in the summer garden.
Pithecoctenium cynanchoides, the monkey's comb, is a vigorous, tendril-climbing vine of the trumpet-creeper family, Bignoniaceae, native to the warm woodlands and thickets of South America. Semi-evergreen in mild climates, the vine climbs by many-branched tendrils and clothes a support quickly in heart-shaped, three-parted leaves, the terminal leaflet often turned into a grasping tendril of its own.
Polygonatum commutatum, the great or giant Solomon's seal, is a bold native perennial of the eastern North American woodlands, sending up tall, unbranched, gracefully arching stems clad in broad, oval, alternate leaves. From the leaf axils along the underside of each stem hang small, creamy-white, bell-shaped flowers, usually in pairs, in late spring and early summer.
Hardiness
Zones 3–8
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
3–5 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
pain relief, digestive health, respiratory support, general wellness
Polygonatum odoratum 'Variegatum', the variegated Solomon's seal, is one of the most graceful of all shade perennials, an Old World cousin of the native Solomon's seals grown for luminous, cream-edged foliage on arching stems. Each lance-shaped leaf carries a soft green center rimmed and streaked in creamy white, and the new stems flush a warm rose before greening.
Hardiness
Zones 4–9
Light
Part Shade / Full Shade
Height
1–2 ft.
Spread
1–2 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
respiratory support, pain relief, digestive health, general wellness
Before European settlement reshaped the eastern landscape, Prunus americana was a fixture at the forest edge: thicket-forming, thorny, and extravagantly beautiful in early spring when the plum covered itself in white flowers before the leaves had even stirred. The Lakota knew the plum as kañta, the Cherokee as gunasdv, and across dozens of nations from the Great Plains to the Appalachians the tree was considered a plant of genuine importance. The fruits were eaten fresh, dried into cakes, and worked into pemmican, the dense, calorie-rich mixture of dried meat, fat, and fruit that sustained people through long winters and longer journeys. The inner bark was used medicinally, and the dense, close-grained wood was worked into tools. This was not an ornamental plant in the minds of the people who knew it first. The plum was a resource, in the fullest sense.
A native plum with a longer human history than any other fruit in North America. Prunus angustifolia, the Chickasaw plum, also called Cherokee plum, sand plum, sandhill plum, or Florida sand plum depending on the part of the range you are standing in, was actively cultivated by Indigenous peoples across the southeastern and central United States long before European contact. The Chickasaw, Cherokee, and several other nations carried the species in their orchards and food gardens, dried the fruit for winter storage, and almost certainly moved the plant eastward through pre-Columbian trade networks from what botanists now believe to be the species' true origin further west. The species was so deeply associated with Indigenous cultivation by the time European naturalists arrived that the binomial angustifolia, narrow leaf, eventually displaced earlier names like P. chicasa in formal taxonomy, though the common names kept the tribal attribution. Kansas made the plant its official state fruit in 2022. Few American native fruits carry their human history this visibly.
Hardiness
Zones 5–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
6–10 ft.
Spread
6–10 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
topical applications, digestive health, respiratory support
Prunus caroliniana, the Carolina cherry laurel, is a fast, dense broadleaf evergreen native to the coastal plain of the southeastern United States, from North Carolina to Texas. The glossy, deep green, finely toothed leaves and tight, upright habit make the tree one of the South's most useful evergreen screens, and the crushed foliage carries the sharp almond, maraschino-cherry scent that marks the genus.
Prunus japonica, the Japanese bush cherry or Japanese almond-cherry, is a compact deciduous shrub grown for an early flood of delicate pink-to-white bloom. Wiry branches carry dense clusters of five-petaled flowers just as the leaves appear, wrapping the low, rounded frame in soft color in early to mid spring.
Prunus mume, the Japanese flowering apricot, is one of the most beloved of all winter-flowering trees, opening almond-scented blossoms in the depths of winter, from soft white to deep pink, on bare branches while the rest of the garden sleeps. In China and Japan the mei or ume has been celebrated in poetry and painting for well over a thousand years as a symbol of resilience and the turning of the year.
Hardiness
Zones 6–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
18–25 ft.
Spread
12–18 ft.
Bloom
Pink
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
respiratory support, digestive health, general wellness
Prunus mume 'Peggy Clarke' is a selection of the Japanese flowering apricot, a medium-sized deciduous tree grown above all for showy, deeply fragrant blossoms that open in the depths of winter when few other trees are in flower. 'Peggy Clarke' bears rich rose-pink, double, cup-shaped flowers, ruffled and fragrant, crowded along the bare branches in late winter and early spring.
Hardiness
Zones 6–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
15–25 ft.
Spread
12–15 ft.
Bloom
Pink
Plant type
Tree
Traditional use
respiratory support, digestive health, general wellness
Ptelea trifoliata, the hop tree or wafer ash, is a unique and underappreciated native, a small, bushy deciduous tree of eastern and central North America. Highly adaptable, the plant takes dry, rocky ground as readily as moist, well-drained sites, which makes the hop tree a fine choice for naturalized landscapes, pollinator gardens, and woodland edges.
'Aromi Sunrise' is a deciduous azalea from the storied breeding program of Dr. Eugene Aromi, the University of South Alabama professor who spent decades teaching heat-shy azaleas to flourish along the Gulf Coast. Introduced in 1987, this hybrid marries the bold Knap Hill azalea 'Hiawatha' with the native Florida azalea, Rhododendron austrinum, so the plant inherits both the size and clarity of the English strains and the toughness and fragrance of a southern wildflower. The result is exactly what Aromi chased across more than a thousand crosses: a large-flowered, sweet-scented, heat-tolerant azalea for gardens where the classic mountain sorts fail.
Salvia 'Phyllis Fancy' is a vigorous, large hybrid sage with a good pedigree, found as a chance seedling at the University of California, Santa Cruz Arboretum and named for a longtime volunteer there. The parentage is thought to involve Salvia leucantha, the Mexican bush sage, and possibly Salvia chiapensis, though the cross has never been confirmed.
Salvia leucantha 'Midnight' is the all-purple form of the Mexican bush sage, and the difference is worth seeing. Where the common kind carries small white corollas against purple calyces, 'Midnight' drops the white altogether, so the long arching spikes read as pure, saturated purple from calyx to flower, a deeper and more solid color that carries even further across an autumn garden.
Salvia 'Anthony Parker' is a big, late-blooming hybrid sage with a charming South Carolina origin. The plant arose as a chance seedling in the Beaufort garden of the plantswoman Frances Parker, a cross between Salvia leucantha 'Midnight' and the pineapple sage Salvia elegans, and Frances rescued the young seedling from the path of the mower and named it for her grandson Anthony, then a year old, in 1994. From that lucky reprieve came one of the best late-season salvias for the South.
Salvia mexicana, the big blue Mexican sage, is a tall, dramatic perennial grown for deep, saturated blue-violet flowers that arrive when the gardening year is winding down. The tubular blooms, set in contrasting calyces, are carried in long spikes above bold, heart-shaped leaves, and few plants bring so pure and deep a blue to the autumn garden.
Salvia microphylla 'Deltoid' is a shrubby form of the littleleaf or baby sage grown for warm salmon-coral flowers and neat, triangular, deltoid leaves. The small tubular blooms open over a long season and read as a soft coral against the fine, glossy foliage, a gentler tone than the hot scarlet of many littleleaf sages.
