Callerya reticulata, 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 Millettia reticulata and Wisteria reticulata, 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.
Most of the summersweets drop their leaves and sleep through winter; Clethra pringlei 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.
Oleander, Nerium oleander, 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.
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.
'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.
