{"title":"Coming Winter 2027","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe cool-season shelf, a year and change out. Dormant-season plants take their time in propagation as much as in the garden, and these are the trees and shrubs we expect to release into the winter of 2027, once they have put on the growth a single season cannot give them. Slow is the whole idea here. If you garden on a long horizon, this is your shelf; leave your name and we will write when the dormant window comes around.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"camellia-rosaeflora","title":"Camellia rosaeflora","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCamellia rosaeflora\u003c\/em\u003e is a graceful species camellia from China, one of the lesser-known kinds Woodlanders keeps in circulation for American gardeners. The habit is open and upright, the leaves small and fine for the genus, and in early spring the branches carry masses of small pink flowers, roughly an inch across and lightly double, in such profusion that the spent petals often fall to lay a soft pink carpet on the ground beneath.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe effect is quiet and charming rather than showy, a fine-textured change from the heavy formal doubles. Like most camellias, the rose-flowered camellia is at finest in semi-shade, in sandy, slightly acidic soil kept mulched and watered, where the airy frame and clouds of pink bloom light a shaded border. A lovely and uncommon species for the collector and for the gardener after something softer in the camellia season.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057824534643,"sku":"CAME-ROSA-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-308.jpg?v=1720136895"},{"product_id":"clethra-pringlei","title":"Clethra pringlei","description":"\u003cp\u003eMost of the summersweets drop their leaves and sleep through winter; \u003cem\u003eClethra pringlei\u003c\/em\u003e keeps them. This Mexican member of the clan is a broad-leaved evergreen, a large, slow-growing shrub or small tree from the mountain woodlands of northeastern Mexico, and one of the more surprising plants in the genus for a gardener who knows only the deciduous American kinds.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Mexican clethra was brought into cultivation by the plant explorers at Yucca-Do Nursery in Texas, and remains a relatively new and little-known introduction. The broad, fleshy, elliptic leaves, toothed toward the tip, emerge a warm bronze and settle to deep glossy green, holding the plant handsome the year round. In summer come the long racemes of white flowers, carrying a distinctive cinnamon fragrance rather than the honey-clove of the northern summersweets, a scent worth planting for on its own.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRare and a touch tender, the Mexican clethra is a plant for the adventuresome southern gardener in zones 8 to 10, best given a warm, sheltered site in full sun to part shade where the new wood can ripen before winter and the evergreen frame is spared the hardest freezes. Site where the cinnamon-scented racemes can be met at close range, in a courtyard, a sheltered border, or the heart of a collector's bed, and pair with other broadleaf evergreens that share the taste for warmth.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057842786419,"sku":"CLET-PRIN-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-977.jpg?v=1720137478"},{"product_id":"ilex-vomitoria-folsoms-weeping","title":"Ilex vomitoria 'Folsom's Weeping'","description":"\u003cp\u003eYaupon 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYaupon holds a deeper claim on the region than ornament. The roasted leaves and twigs made the caffeinated 'black drink' that Indigenous peoples of the Southeast brewed for ceremony and trade, and that later served coastal colonists as a homegrown coffee or tea. This holly is North America's only caffeine-bearing native plant. The forbidding species name, vomitoria, comes from a European misreading of the ritual purging that sometimes attended the drink, wrongly pinned on the plant, which is not emetic in normal use; the softer common name descends from the Catawban ya'pa, a diminutive meaning 'small tree.'\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe weeping form was first found in Folsom, Louisiana in 1952 by J.A. Foret, and named by the late Tom Dodd, Jr. of Semmes, Alabama, one of the great Gulf Coast plantsmen. Long a prized accent in Southern gardens and stubbornly hard to find in small sizes, these plants set the same crop of small translucent scarlet berries as any female yaupon when a male grows nearby, the fruit hanging along the drooping branches from fall well into spring.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGive 'Folsom's Weeping' room to be a specimen. A single plant makes a living exclamation point beside a gate, at the turn of a path, or against a plain wall where the cascading silhouette can be read against the sky; several set in a row weep into an unusual informal screen. Underplant with low evergreens or a groundcover so the sweeping lower branches have something quiet to fall against, and site a male yaupon such as 'Dewerth' within range to load the branches with winter fruit.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057889939571,"sku":"ILE-VOMI-FOLS-WEEP-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1223.jpg?v=1720138778"},{"product_id":"keteleeria-davidiana","title":"Keteleeria davidiana","description":"\u003cp\u003eA refined and rarely encountered evergreen conifer from the mountains of southeastern China and Taiwan, Keteleeria davidiana is a tree of quiet distinction. Introduced to Western gardens in the nineteenth century, the species has stayed largely within botanical gardens and specialist collections, seldom offered in the nursery trade and still little known outside conifer circles. The genus name honors J. B. Keteleer, a French nurseryman of the era, while the epithet davidiana remembers Armand David, the missionary-naturalist who botanized widely in China.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOften called fir-like, Keteleeria is a close cousin of the true firs (Abies) but forms a small, ancient genus separate from them. Young trees make a stately, symmetrical pyramid, broadening into a dignified, open-crowned specimen with age. The glossy, deep green needles are arranged in flattened sprays along the branches for a texture at once soft and architectural, and the erect, cylindrical, light brown cones, reminiscent of fir cones and often quite large, ripen and then break apart on the branch rather than falling whole.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the wild, Keteleeria davidiana favors mountainous ground with warm summers and comparatively mild winters, conditions that closely mirror much of the American Southeast and hint at why the tree suits Southern gardens better than most exotic conifers. The Woodlanders plants are seed-grown from trees once cultivated at the University of Georgia's experimental facility in Tifton, Georgia, an important site for testing plants under hot summers and mild winters. Though that collection has since been lost, these seedlings carry that regional trial work forward.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the landscape, give this conifer full sun, reliably well-drained soil, and room to develop the natural form, which reaches roughly forty to sixty feet over time. The species performs best where winters are not extreme and drainage is dependable. For the collector, the conifer enthusiast, or the designer reaching beyond the ordinary palette, Keteleeria davidiana offers real rarity, botanical interest, and a strong yet elegant evergreen presence that anchors a large garden through every season.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057906520179,"sku":"KETE-DAVI-01G","price":62.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Keteleeria_davidiana_DimvokWKaoxJ.jpg?v=1771615773"},{"product_id":"millettia-reticulata","title":"Callerya reticulata","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCallerya reticulata\u003c\/em\u003e, the evergreen wisteria, is one of the most graceful vines for the Southern garden, and one of the most refined. Once known to botanists as \u003cem\u003eMillettia reticulata\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eWisteria reticulata\u003c\/em\u003e, this evergreen climber is not a true wisteria, though the cascading habit and aristocratic bearing recall one. A vine for porches and pergolas, the evergreen wisteria prizes quiet bloom over brash spectacle, and carries both fragrance and folklore in the tendrils.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNative to the humid woodlands of China, Vietnam, and Taiwan, this member of the pea family wears dense, leathery, deep-green leaves, each compound leaf composed of seven to thirteen softly pointed leaflets whose netted veining gives the species the name reticulata, netted. In bloom, the evergreen wisteria is transformed: panicles of bluish-violet, pea-shaped flowers with golden centers hang like garlands of amethyst, scenting the air with a heady mix of cedar and camphor from the height of summer well into fall.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFar more manageable than the rampant true wisterias, the evergreen wisteria is a restrained, well-mannered climber for zones 8 to 10, happy in fertile, loamy, evenly moist soil in dappled to full sun. Prune faded flowers to prevent seeding and to spur fresh bloom, and at the cold edge of the range shelter the plant in a pot for winter. Pollinators work the flowers heavily, and with age the slender stems thicken into woody, twisting trunks like the old vines of courtyard walls.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere is a second life to this vine. In traditional Chinese medicine the dried stem, known as ji xue teng, has a long history as a remedy for the blood and circulation, and modern study has isolated genistein and flavonoids of interest. Grown here for the evergreen foliage and the fragrant amethyst bloom.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhotos courtesy of Jim Robbins.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057924542579,"sku":"MILL-RETI-01G","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-842.jpg?v=1720139655"},{"product_id":"nerium-oleander-double-pink","title":"Nerium oleander 'Double Pink'","description":"\u003cp\u003eOleander, \u003cem\u003eNerium oleander\u003c\/em\u003e, is a large, sun-loving evergreen shrub of the Mediterranean, grown since antiquity for a long, generous summer of bloom. Dark green, leathery, lance-shaped leaves ride in whorls of three along the long, sparingly branched stems, and from late spring well into fall the branch tips carry showy, lightly fragrant flower clusters. 'Double Pink' bears fully double, rose-like flowers in a soft, warm pink.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFew shrubs are so at home in heat and hardship. Oleander has graced Mediterranean gardens since Roman times, turns up in the wall paintings of Pompeii, and thrives on exactly the conditions that defeat softer plants: blazing sun, drought, lean soil, and salt spray off the sea. That toughness makes the shrub a mainstay of coastal and roadside plantings across the warm world, and in colder climates a fine tub plant to summer outdoors and shelter under glass for winter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne caution belongs in every oleander listing: all parts of the plant are poisonous, holding cardiac glycosides that are dangerous if eaten. The practical garden risk is low, since the intense bitterness keeps animals and people off, and as the old Woodlanders catalog has always put it, oleander is poisonous but not likely to be ingested except by beach goers who choose oleander sticks to cook wieners. The moral is simple: never grill on an oleander stick, and site the shrub away from where small children or livestock might nibble.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGive 'Double Pink' full sun and well-drained soil and let the shrub do what oleander does best: a fast informal hedge, a screen, a sunny border anchor, or a large container on a hot terrace. The soft double pink flowers cool a bright summer scheme and read beautifully against the dark green foliage. Deer and rabbits leave the bitter leaves alone, drought and salt are shrugged off, and a hard late-winter prune keeps an old plant dense and full of bloom.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057927950451,"sku":"NERI-OLEA-DOUB-PINK-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/C3724695-14EC-447C-AD37-C63F17F334E4.jpg?v=1724938446"},{"product_id":"prunus-japonica","title":"Prunus japonica","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePrunus japonica\u003c\/em\u003e, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSmall, bright red cherries follow in late summer, round and shiny, tart and slightly astringent, best cooked into preserves and jellies or left for the birds. The narrow, lance-shaped leaves emerge fresh green and turn warm yellow to orange in fall, so the two-to-four-foot shrub earns a place across several seasons.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA small shrub for a small space, \u003cem\u003ePrunus japonica\u003c\/em\u003e suits the front of a border, a low informal hedge, a container, or a woodland edge, in full sun to part shade and well-drained soil. Long valued in Japan and dependable in warm climates, the plant performs especially well in southern gardens.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBeyond the garden, the seed of \u003cem\u003ePrunus japonica\u003c\/em\u003e is one source of the traditional Chinese herb yu li ren, long used to moisten the bowels. Give the shrub a sunny, well-drained spot, and enjoy an easy, early-flowering plant that feeds the season's first pollinators.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePhoto courtesy of Visions.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057947349107,"sku":"PRUN-JAPO-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/PrunusJaponicaVisionPicturesWoodlanders1.webp?v=1753121842"},{"product_id":"punica-granitum-eight-ball","title":"Punica granatum ‘Eight Ball’","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere are pomegranates grown for fruit, and pomegranates grown for flowers, and then there is 'Eight Ball', grown for sheer astonishment. Where the species bears globes the color of garnets, \u003cem\u003ePunica granatum\u003c\/em\u003e 'Eight Ball' ripens fruit so dark, round, and dusky that the pomegranates look dipped in coal, closer to the ball the cultivar is named for than to anything in the produce aisle. The color runs bone-deep: the fruit is so loaded with anthocyanin pigment that even the cambium beneath the bark shows purple.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'Eight Ball' is a modern American introduction with a good story behind the strangeness. The plant is a seedling selected in 1986 by plantsman Tony Avent from a batch of pomegranates that had come through the brutal winter of 1983 to 1984, when temperatures fell to nine below zero, with little damage. Avent introduced the selection through Plant Delights Nursery and Juniper Level Botanic Garden in 1997, choosing 'Eight Ball' for cold-hardiness, productivity, and above all those improbable near-black fruits, each about two and a half inches across.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBehind the novelty stands one of the oldest cultivated plants on earth. The pomegranate has been grown across Persia, the Levant, and the Mediterranean since antiquity, the many-seeded fruit a byword for fertility and abundance from the myth of Persephone to the ornament of temple and textile, and the astringent rind long kept in the traditional apothecary. Even the botanical name reaches back: \u003cem\u003egranatum\u003c\/em\u003e, grainy or full of seeds, is the root of the word grenade, while \u003cem\u003ePunica\u003c\/em\u003e recalls Carthage and the Punic peoples through whom Rome first met the fruit. 'Eight Ball' carries all of that lineage and then takes the color somewhere the ancients never saw.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, treat 'Eight Ball' as both a conversation piece and a well-behaved fruiting shrub. The narrow, glossy leaves and flamboyant orange summer flowers give the plant ordinary pomegranate grace; the black fruit that follows is the surprise. Give full sun, sharp drainage, and room for a deciduous shrub of eight to ten feet, and site the plant where the fruit can be found and marveled at, near a path, an entry, or a collector's bed. The arils inside are fewer and paler than a dessert pomegranate and the fruit is modest on the tongue, so grow 'Eight Ball' for spectacle and for the story as much as the harvest. Drought-tolerant once established.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAdditional photo courtesy of Juniper Level Botanic Garden.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057949675635,"sku":"PUNI-GRAN-EIGH-BALL-01G","price":38.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Punica-granatum-Eight-Ball.i-1731.s-66772.r-1.webp?v=1750684496"},{"product_id":"quercus-oglethorpensis","title":"Quercus oglethorpensis","description":"\u003cp\u003eFew oaks in North America are rarer. \u003cem\u003eQuercus oglethorpensis\u003c\/em\u003e went unnoticed by science until 1940, when the botanist Wilbur Duncan described the tree from material gathered in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, and gave the species the county's name. Even now Oglethorpe oak is known from only a scattering of stands across the Georgia and South Carolina Piedmont, with far-flung outliers in Louisiana and Mississippi, and the species sits on every serious list of oaks of conservation concern.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is, despite long mislabeling, a member of the white oak group: the leaves are narrow, elliptic, and untoothed, without the bristle tips of the red oaks, and the acorns ripen in a single season rather than waiting out two. Those leaves are the ornament, slim and refined for an oak, turning soft orange to red in autumn over a clean, rounded crown of moderate size, more at home on a campus or a large lawn than many of the outsized cousins in the genus.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe grow Oglethorpe oak because someone must. The fuller history and ecology are laid out in \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/blogs\/the-node\/a-guide-to-quercus-oglethorpensis-history-ecology-botany-and-design\"\u003eour guide to the species\u003c\/a\u003e. To plant one is a small act of keeping, a way of holding a vanishing tree in the ground a little longer, and that, more than the fall color, is the reason to find the tree room.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the garden, treat Oglethorpe oak as a refined, moderate-sized shade or specimen tree for a campus, a large lawn, a park, or a naturalistic native planting on good upland ground. Give full sun to part shade and well-drained soil, allow room for a forty- to sixty-foot rounded crown, and pair with other Piedmont natives. The slim, willow-like leaves and clean orange-to-red fall color are handsome in their own right, but the deeper reason to grow the tree is conservation: every planted Oglethorpe oak is one more foothold for a species the wild is losing.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057961472115,"sku":"QUER-OGLE-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1189.jpg?v=1720140582"},{"product_id":"rosa-x-mme-gregoire-staechelin","title":"Rosa x Mme. Gregoire Staechelin","description":"\u003cp\u003eVigorous spreading, deciduous hybrid rose climber also known as 'Spanish Beauty'. It has large pink flowers that are red in bud. It blooms in the spring. Its foliage is dark green and relatively free of common rose problems. I can grow in full sun or on a north wall. Heavy petal flowers tend to nod which is advantage in roses usually seen from below. This hybrid by Pedro Dot of Spain was introduced in 1927.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057979428979,"sku":"ROSA-MME-GREG-STAE-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-1269.jpg?v=1720140926"},{"product_id":"stewartia-monodelpha","title":"Stewartia monodelpha","description":"\u003cp\u003eUpright deciduous tree ultimately medium sized. Abundant small white flowers and attractive cinnamon colored bark make this a desirable ornamental. Generally easier to grow than other Stewartias. (See DIR)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057999319155,"sku":"STEW-MONO-01G","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"taxodium-ascendens","title":"Taxodium ascendens","description":"\u003cp\u003ePond cypress is the quieter of the two native bald cypresses, a deciduous conifer closely related to the more widespread Taxodium distichum but smaller, tidier, and distinct in leaf. Where bald cypress wears soft, feather-like foliage, pond cypress carries fine, scale-like leaves pressed close and ascending along the shoots, giving the young tree a narrow, almost columnar, pyramidal outline.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe name Taxodium means yew-like, for the foliage, and ascendens describes the upright set of those scaly leaves. Pond cypress grows most often in the still, acidic waters of depressional wetlands, ponds, and cypress domes across the southern coastal plain, rather than along the moving rivers that bald cypress favors, and produces fewer of the knobby root knees that make bald cypress famous. Old trees flatten and grow picturesque, and in autumn the foliage turns a warm russet-orange before it falls.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor all the wetland origins, pond cypress is remarkably adaptable, growing well on ordinary upland soil and tough enough to serve as a street or parking-lot tree that few other conifers could match. The narrow young habit suits tight spaces, and the deciduous, fine-textured canopy casts a light, dappled shade that lawn and underplanting can enjoy. A native of the southern United States, and a fine choice for a wet spot, a pondside, or a rain garden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGive pond cypress full sun to part shade and a moist to wet, acidic soil, though the tree will take average garden ground once established. Site at a pond edge, in a rain garden or low, damp spot, or as a specimen or street tree where a narrow, deciduous conifer is wanted, and pair with other moisture-loving natives. Slow to moderate in growth, long-lived, and all but trouble-free.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058001481843,"sku":"TAXO-ASCE-01G","price":15.2,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-246.jpg?v=1720141383"},{"product_id":"xylosma-congestum","title":"Xylosma congestum","description":"\u003cp\u003eShiny Xylosma is sometimes listed as Xylosma senticosa. It is an attractive heat and drought tolerant evergreen shrub with glossy leaves about 3\" long and 1\" wide. It is much grown in California and the Southwest as a hedge, screen planting, or small tree. The greenish yellow flowers are not conspicuous but fragrant. This plant is uncommon in southeastern U.S. landscapes but has done very well here in our area. It should have a sunny or slightly shaded area with good soil and good drainage. This plant is native to eastern Asia.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42058013737075,"sku":"YLOS-CONG-01G","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-2182.jpg?v=1720141833"},{"product_id":"rhododendron-sunrise","title":"Rhododendron 'Sunrise'","description":"\u003cp\u003e'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, \u003cem\u003eRhododendron austrinum\u003c\/em\u003e, 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn mid spring the shrub comes alive with a glowing display. Tubular, funnel-shaped flowers open two inches across, their brilliant yellow petals lit by a vivid orange-yellow blotch and finished with gently wavy edges that catch the light. As many as fourteen blooms crowd each flat truss, and a soft fragrance drifts from them that draws in bees, butterflies, and passing gardeners alike. Elliptic, olive-green leaves follow, softly downy beneath, giving the plant a quiet presence through summer before autumn closes the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe name reads like the flower looks. That first flush of yellow shot with orange has the quality of daybreak, and 'Aromi Sunrise' honors both the breeder and the moment. The genus name Rhododendron is Greek for rose tree, while azalea comes from azaleos, meaning dry, an old reference to the open, well-drained woods where native species grow. Those same native azaleas have scented Southern springs for generations, though country lore has always known to admire and not to taste: like all Rhododendron, the leaves and nectar hold grayanotoxins and are not edible.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Aromi Sunrise' belongs at the woodland edge, in a dappled border, or among high pines where morning sun can ignite the trusses and afternoon shade can spare the foliage. Reaching perhaps four to six feet with an informal, softly spreading frame, the shrub layers beautifully with ferns, native phlox, foamflower, and other deciduous azaleas timed to extend the bloom. Plant in moist, acidic, well-drained soil, mulch the shallow roots, and give the plant room to be seen when the flowers open. Photos courtesy of Mike Creech and Bob Stelloh.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42935907942515,"sku":"RHOD-SUNR-01G","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/AromiSunriseWoodlanders2.jpg?v=1742930490"}],"url":"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/collections\/prophouse-winter-2027.oembed","provider":"Woodlanders","version":"1.0","type":"link"}