27 plants in this collection
A rare, semi-evergreen shrub, Baccharis dioica resembles the common groundsel bush, Baccharis halimifolia, but is quite distinct. In 1979, just before Hurricane Frederic did tremendous damage to the Mobile, Alabama area, we found this plant growing behind the dunes on Dauphin Island.
Buddleia davidii 'Attraction' is a more compact butterfly bush than the usual run of the species, forming a rounded shrub of arching branches lined with gray-green leaves. From summer into fall, royal red, fragrant flowers gather in nodding panicles six to ten inches long, drawing butterflies and bees in profusion.
'Lochinch' is one of the most refined of the butterfly bushes, a cross of Buddleia davidii and the silvery Buddleia fallowiana that takes the best of both: dense, fragrant panicles of soft lavender-blue, each tiny flower lit by a small orange eye, over handsome gray-green, almost silver foliage. Compact and rounded, the shrub blooms all summer into fall on the new growth.
'Miss Ruby' is the butterfly bush that finally cracked the color barrier: a striking, near-sterile hybrid of Buddleia davidii and Buddleia globosa carrying racemes of bright, purplish pink, a magenta few other butterfly bushes can touch. The shrub was bred by Dr. Dennis Werner at the JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, North Carolina, the source of our cuttings.
Endemic to the mountain scrub of Madagascar, where the plant scrambles along slopes between two and six thousand feet, Buddleja madagascariensis throws out long arching canes that will climb to ten feet given a wall to lean on. The flowers come in late winter and spring on terminal panicles up to ten inches long, opening deep yellow and aging through orange to soft pink along the same spike, all of it carrying a honeyed fragrance strong enough to scent a courtyard. The leaves are narrowly ovate, dark green above, silvery and felted beneath, so the whole shrub seems to flicker when wind moves through the canes.
A small boxwood with narrow, bright green leaves and an unusually showy spring bloom, this is apparently the true Buxus harlandii. The boxwoods commonly sold in the South as B. harlandii, including the variety 'Richard', are, according to Dr. Todd Lasseigne, another Asian species, Buxus bodinieri; the real harlandii is much less often seen.
Baccharis halimifolia is a plant of edges and thresholds, growing where the land loosens and blurs into water: salt marsh margins, ditches, tidal creeks, and back dunes. In fall, when most things are shutting down, the groundsel bush erupts into a soft storm of white seed fluff, like a marsh firework frozen mid-explosion. This is the shrub that coastal Louisiana calls manglier, that botanists call groundsel bush or eastern baccharis, and that local healers have quietly trusted for generations.
Baptisia alba, white wild indigo, is a striking native perennial of tall spires of white, pea-like flowers over deep blue-green foliage. Native to the eastern and central United States, the species carries a rich history as a dye plant, used by Native American peoples and early settlers as a substitute for true indigo, and the genus name, from the Greek bapto, to dip, records that role.
When Woodlanders began in 1980, this was about the only Baptisia known to gardeners; we went on to introduce many of the species that have since become popular garden perennials. Baptisia australis, blue wild indigo, is a long-lived native, essentially a prairie plant of open glades on limestone soil, with handsome olive-green compound leaves topped in spring by spikes of bright indigo-blue, pea-like flowers.
Baptisia megacarpa, the Apalachicola or bigpod wild indigo, is a rare and remarkable native of the floodplains and forested slopes of the Florida Panhandle, southeastern Alabama, and southwestern Georgia. The species grows on sandy ridges and stream terraces in the Chattahoochee River drainage, finely tuned to that particular corner of the South.
Baptisia minor is the dwarf of the blue false indigos, a compact native perennial that gives all the drama of the well-known Baptisia australis on a smaller, tidier frame. Often treated botanically as Baptisia australis var. minor, the plant stands lower and more compact, yet carries full-sized spires of indigo-blue, pea-shaped flowers held well clear of the blue-green foliage. Much admired in the Woodlanders garden, this is a perennial that settles into a sunny bed for decades.
Baptisia sphaerocarpa, yellow wild indigo, is the sunny member of the wild indigo clan, a tough, rounded native perennial topped in spring with short, dense spikes of clear bright yellow, pea-like flowers over fresh blue-green foliage. Compact and shrubby, the plant brings strong color and structure to a sunny border.
Called Philippine violet, though neither Philippine nor a violet, Barleria cristata is a showy subtropical shrub that saves its display for the close of the year, opening dark blue-violet, trumpet-shaped flowers through late summer and autumn when much of the garden is winding down. A perennial in zones 8 and 9 and a four-to-six-foot shrub in zone 10, native to India and Myanmar.
Hardy begonia is the surprise of the shade border: a true begonia that survives a cold winter. Begonia grandis carries large, pointed, olive-green leaves lit with red veins and flushed deep rose-red beneath, and in late summer and fall hangs loose clusters of soft pink flowers on red-tinted stems, a cool, luminous note when most shade plants have finished.
Bejaria racemosa, the tarflower, is one of the odd and lovely surprises of the Florida scrub, a heath-family shrub that looks nothing like the rest of the clan. Where blueberries and azaleas carry small, fused, bell-shaped blooms, tarflower opens wide flowers of seven separate petals, white to soft pink and sweetly fragrant, held in loose summer racemes. The genus honors the eighteenth-century Spanish botanist Jose Bejar, and though older books spell the name Befaria, botanists have since settled on Bejaria.
Crossvine is a high-climbing, semi-evergreen native vine with bright trumpet flowers, and 'Helen Fredel' is a large-flowered selection in red-orange with a yellow throat, a shade between the old varieties 'Atrosanguinea' and 'Tangerine Beauty'. Climbing high by tendrils and adhesive holdfasts, the crossvine flowers heavily in early summer and again, more lightly, later, and shows to best effect on a fence, an arbor, or a trellis in sun or part shade.
Crossvine is a high-climbing, semi-evergreen native vine, and 'Tangerine Beauty' is the famous tangerine-orange selection, opening a spring blaze of bright orange, trumpet-shaped flowers and blooming again, more lightly, through the season. Climbing high by tendrils and adhesive holdfasts, the crossvine shows to best effect on a fence, a wall, or a trellis in sun or part shade, where the early trumpets draw hummingbirds in numbers.
Crossvine is a vigorous, semi-evergreen native climber that ascends by tendrils and adhesive holdfasts, and var. atrosanguinea is the red one: where the typical crossvine flowers orange, this striking selection, introduced by Woodlanders, carries abundant deep red to red-purple trumpets, often over narrower, longer leaves. The flowers even smell faintly of mocha on a warm day.
Bouvardia ternifolia, the firecracker bush, is a compact, heat-loving shrub of the southwestern United States and Mexico, hung from late spring to frost with clusters of long, slender, scarlet-red tubular flowers. Few plants pull hummingbirds in like this one: the bright tubes are pitched exactly for their bills, and the bloom keeps coming through the hottest months when little else holds color.
Buddleia alternifolia, the fountain or alternate-leaf butterfly bush, stands apart from the usual butterfly-bush crowd. A deciduous shrub native to northwestern China, the fountain butterfly bush is the most cold-hardy of the genus, and is grown above all for a weeping form and an early-season flood of fragrant, lavender-purple bloom.
