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.
Camellia rosaeflora 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.
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.
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
A 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.
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.
There 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, Punica granatum '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.
Hardiness
Zones 7–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
8–10 ft.
Spread
6–8 ft.
Bloom
Orange
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
digestive health, heart support, general wellness, topical applications
Few oaks in North America are rarer. Quercus oglethorpensis 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.
'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.
Vigorous 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.
Upright 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)
Pond 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.
Shiny 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.
