Gelsemium rankinii is one of the South's gentler mysteries, a twining, semi-evergreen vine that has long threaded through the quiet wetlands and river margins of the Gulf Coast. Where other vines sprawl boldly, the swamp jessamine moves with a kind of restraint, weaving through shrubs and small trees on glossy, fine-textured foliage, with a poise born of deep, humid landscapes.
Carolina jessamine is the twining gold of the Southern spring, native to the southern United States and honored as the state flower of South Carolina. An evergreen vine of easy grace, the plant clothes a fence or trellis in glossy, narrow leaves and, as winter loosens, opens a wash of fragrant yellow trumpets that scent the whole garden.
'Pride of Augusta' is the old double-flowered Carolina jessamine, a twining evergreen vine that turns the familiar Southern gold into something fuller and more lavish. Where the wild species opens simple funnels, this selection packs each bloom with extra petals, so the vine carries a long, generous show of ruffled, double yellow flowers, sweetly fragrant, from late winter into early spring.
Carolina jessamine is the state flower of South Carolina and one of the most beloved evergreen vines of the South, prized for the wash of fragrant yellow trumpets that opens the gardening year. 'Margarita' is the cold-hardy answer to that beauty, a selection that carries the same sweet-scented gold well north of where the species usually gives out.
In the dappled understory of the Eastern woods, Geranium maculatum has made a home for as long as the forests have stood. Known to generations as wild geranium or cranesbill, this native perennial forms a tidy clump of softly lobed leaves and lifts loose sprays of rose-purple, five-petaled flowers, as much a part of the old spring landscape as dogwood and trillium.
Some plants elevate the familiar into the extraordinary, and Gordonia lasianthus 'Variegata' does exactly that, taking the quiet majesty of the native loblolly bay and dressing it in a silken fringe of cream. The glossy green leaves are edged in irregular strokes of ivory, as though touched by the brush of some moonlit painter in the pine woods, and the whole shrub glimmers softly through every season.
Gymnocladus dioicus, the Kentucky coffeetree, is a bold, handsome native shade tree that keeps its own unhurried calendar, among the last trees to leaf out in spring and the first to stand bare in fall. That long leafless season gave the tree a curious name, which means naked branch, and the winter silhouette of thick, blunt, sculptural limbs is a feature in itself. Hillier's great manual calls the Kentucky coffeetree one of the most handsome of all hardy trees, and few who grow one would disagree.
