The flora of a whole continent, grown for the garden. This collection gathers the trees, shrubs, vines, and wildflowers native to North America, plants that evolved here alongside the birds, bees, and butterflies that still depend on them.
Hypericum nudiflorum is the early riser among the St. John's Worts, a slender, upright shrub that opens golden flowers as early as May, often a full month ahead of relatives. The blooms carry the many-stamened brush typical of the clan, set against broad, light green, oval leaves that give the plant a softer, leafier look than the needle-leaved species.
Hypericum prolificum lives up to the name, prolific, disappearing each summer under a heavy crop of bright yellow flowers, each three-quarters of an inch to an inch across and stuffed with a golden brush of stamens. The shrub is dense and rounded, with arching branches, narrow shiny leaves, and reddish, exfoliating bark that peels to show paler layers once the foliage thins.
Hypericum stans is the four-petaled member of the family, a small, upright shrub to about three feet with broad, clasping, blue-green leaves and shreddy, peeling bark. Through summer the stems carry bright yellow flowers an inch across, and where most St. John's Worts open five petals, these show four, set in a neat cross above a pair of large leafy sepals.
Ilex ambigua is the holly almost nobody offers, a medium to large deciduous shrub or small tree of ten to eighteen feet, running open and airy rather than dense. The leaves are small for a holly, thin, often glossy, and finely toothed, turning a soft yellow before falling. Female plants carry berries that are noticeably large for the size of the plant, bright red and handsome in early autumn, though in our experience here they drop rather sooner than the berries of most hollies, so this is a plant for early fall color rather than for a red Christmas. The habit is loose and the bark smooth gray, and the whole effect is closer to a small serviceberry than to the dense evergreen most people picture when they hear holly.
Ilex amelanchier is one of the surprises of the genus, a holly that drops the leaves in fall and carries none of the usual prickles. This rare native grows as a tall deciduous shrub or small tree, and the female plants, this one among them, hang dull, matte red berries on unusually long stems, a soft-toned, almost muted display quite unlike the glossy scarlet of a Christmas holly.
Ilex cassine, the dahoon holly, is an elegant evergreen native of the southern wetlands, and this is a fruiting female, the sex that carries the crop of small, glossy red berries. Unlike the fiercely spined American holly, dahoon holds narrow, smooth-edged, bright green leaves that are a pleasure to plant near a path, and in fall and winter the branches string themselves with scarlet fruit against that clean green. Grown as a large shrub or a small tree, dahoon is one of the most useful evergreen hollies for the South.
Ilex cassine, the dahoon holly, is one of the most useful evergreen hollies of the South, an upright shrub or small tree with bright green, oval, nearly spineless leaves. Female plants carry heavy crops of small, bright red berries, but this is a male selection, grown not for fruit but as the pollen partner that lets nearby female dahoons set that red winter display.
Ilex coriacea, the large gallberry, is a tall evergreen holly of the Southern wetlands, close kin to the familiar inkberry but built on a bigger scale, with broader, leathery, dark green leaves and larger fruit. On female plants the berries ripen to a shining black, a quiet contrast to the glossy foliage through fall and winter.
Possumhaw is the deciduous holly of southern bottomlands, a shrub or small tree that spends the growing season looking like nothing in particular and then earns the whole year in December. The leaves drop, and what is left is a fine gray branch structure loaded with fruit that holds on bare wood through the winter. On the ordinary wild plant that fruit is red. Ilex decidua 'Finch's Golden' carries bright yellow fruit instead, a selection made by Bill Finch of Mobile, Alabama, and the difference against a gray winter sky is not subtle.
Ilex glabra 'Nigra' is the inkberry chosen for good looks in every season, a compact, rounded evergreen holly with unusually rich, dark green leaves. Where the wild inkberry can bronze and dull through a hard winter, this selection was picked to hold a deeper, cleaner green, and the smooth, spineless foliage stays handsome on a tidy frame that runs lower and denser than the run of the species.
Ilex glabra, the inkberry or gallberry, is one of the finest native broadleaf evergreens of eastern North America, rooted in the sandy, acid soils of the coastal plain from Nova Scotia and New Jersey south through Florida and across the Gulf states. In wet pinelands, pocosins, and boggy edges this holly has long been a defining presence, and wherever the ground runs lean, sandy, and moist, inkberry settles in.
Smooth winterberry is similar to the common winterberry, Ilex verticillata, but is much less common in cultivation, and the differences reward a close look. The finely toothed deciduous leaves are glossy above rather than dull, which gives the whole shrub a cleaner and lighter quality through the growing season. Female plants produce attractive red berries, larger and slightly more orange than those of common winterberry, ripening in autumn and eaten by birds. The habit is upright and open, ten to twelve feet in time on a narrow four to six foot frame, with smooth gray bark and a fine twiggy silhouette once the leaves drop.
Ilex 'Sand Pond' is a Woodlanders introduction with a good story and better berries, a natural hybrid between two southeastern native hollies: the stately American holly, Ilex opaca, and the fine-textured myrtle-leaf holly, Ilex myrtifolia. The cross carries small, narrow, glossy evergreen leaves midway between the parents, on a plant that colors up each fall with an unusually heavy set of large red berries.
Ilex opaca, the American holly, is the classic evergreen holly of the eastern woods, a medium-size tree with tough, leathery, spine-edged leaves and, on female trees, the bright berries that have meant Christmas for generations. 'Fallaw' keeps the familiar form but changes the color of the fruit: where the wild tree ripens red, this selection hangs clear amber-yellow berries, an uncommon and cheerful contrast against the dark evergreen foliage.
Ilex opaca, the American holly, is the classic evergreen holly of eastern woods, a medium tree with tough, spine-edged, leathery leaves and the bright red berries that have meant Christmas for generations. 'Selected Red' is one of the good ones, a female clone Woodlanders propagated from a group of hollies planted many years ago in Aiken, South Carolina, chosen for very good foliage and an abundant crop of bright red fruit.
Ilex verticillata 'Jim Dandy' is a small shrub with an outsized job. Winterberry, the native deciduous holly, puts on one of the great shows in the winter garden, bare stems crowded with brilliant red fruit, but only female plants carry that fruit, and only when the right male blooms alongside them. 'Jim Dandy' is that male for the early-flowering winterberries, a dwarf pollinizer bred to bloom in step with them.
Ilex verticillata 'Maryland Beauty' is winterberry doing what winterberry does best, and a little more of it. This native deciduous holly loses the leaves in fall to reveal bare gray stems packed with fruit, and 'Maryland Beauty' was singled out from the northern strain for an especially heavy crop of bright red berries, a dense, glowing display that holds through the winter.
Ilex verticillata is the winterberry, the native deciduous holly grown not for evergreen leaves but for the astonishing display that comes after they fall: bare gray stems packed end to end with bright fruit, lit up across the dead of winter. 'Winter Gold' plays that trick in an unexpected color, trading the usual fire-engine red for warm gold blushed with soft orange-pink, a glowing, gentler note against snow.
Ilex verticillata ‘Winter Red’ is the winterberry other winterberries are measured against. A large, rounded female, six to ten feet high and wide, this native holly drops the summer leaves to reveal bare stems packed with profuse, glossy red berries, and where lesser clones fade, ‘Winter Red’ holds the color clean and bright deep into the season, right through the coldest months.
Yaupon is the fine-textured evergreen holly of the Southeast, native along the coastal plain from Virginia to Texas and a member of the holly family, Aquifoliaceae. The species wears small, glossy, oval leaves on gray twigs, tolerates salt, drought, and hard shearing, and has long anchored Southern gardens as hedge, screen, and topiary. 'Folsom's Weeping' breaks from that upright habit entirely: a tall female selection whose branches spill downward in long, pendulous curtains, so that a single mature plant reads as a green fountain rather than a shrub.
Hardiness
Zones 7–10
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
15–18 ft.
Spread
6–10 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
general wellness, mental & emotional well-being, detoxification & cleansing
