The shrubs that furnish a garden. Small and medium shrubs are the versatile, human-scaled woody plants that fill borders, edge paths, and knit the taller structure to the ground, the layer most gardens rely on most.
Itea virginica, the Virginia sweetspire, is a native shrub of eastern wetlands and streambanks, prized for arching, fragrant white flower spikes in early summer and a brilliant fall display of red, orange, and burgundy. 'Little Henry' is the dwarf of the clan, a low, mounded selection that reaches only about three feet, packing the fragrant flowers and fiery fall color of the full-sized sweetspires into a tidy, compact plant for smaller spaces.
Itea virginica, the Virginia sweetspire, is a native shrub of eastern wetlands and streambanks, grown for arching, fragrant white flower spikes in early summer and brilliant fall color. 'Sarah Eve' is the exception in the family, the first pink sweetspire: the small flowers are essentially white, but they are carried on rosy-pink pedicels that tint the whole arching raceme a soft, distinctive pale pink, a color no other Itea offers.
There are plants that offer fragrance, and then there are plants that conjure memory. Lavandula dentata, with silvery, sawtoothed leaves and near ever-blooming lavender plumes, belongs firmly to the second kind, a bearer of the sort of scent that lingers in a sun-warmed linen chest or in the folds of a well-worn book left on a porch rail.
Hardiness
Zones 8–11
Light
Full Sun
Height
2–3 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
mental & emotional well-being, topical applications, respiratory support, digestive health
Lavandula × intermedia is the lavender that finally makes sense of the Southeast. A natural and cultivated cross between English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) and spike lavender (Lavandula latifolia), the plant is known in Provence as lavandin, and there the sterile, vigorous hybrid has long been the mainstay of the perfume fields, prized for a heavier yield of fragrant oil than either parent alone. The name records that middle ground: intermedia, intermediate, a lavender poised between the sweet refinement of the English kind and the camphorous punch of the spike.
Hardiness
Zones 5–9
Light
Full Sun
Height
2–3 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
mental & emotional well-being, topical applications, respiratory support
Leucothoe racemosa, the sweetbells of Eastern wetland edges, is a fine native shrub too seldom planted. Found wild across the eastern United States in acidic woodland soils that stay damp but never flood, the plant grows upright and loosely branched to six or eight feet, deciduous to semi-evergreen depending on the winter. Botanists now file the species under the name Eubotrys racemosa, though the older Leucothoe is the name most gardeners still use.
The Meiwa kumquat is the sweet one, the kumquat you can pop whole into your mouth and eat skin and all. A small, tidy, evergreen citrus, Fortunella crassifolia carries round, bright orange fruit a little over an inch across, and where most kumquats offer a sweet rind wrapped around sharply sour pulp, the Meiwa softens the contrast: the peel is thick and honey-sweet, the flesh only mildly tart, so the whole fruit eats like candy off the branch.
Morella pumila 'Willow Leaf' is a distinctive, fine-leaved form of the native dwarf waxmyrtle, selected for narrow, elongated, willow-like leaves that give the low shrub an unusually elegant, airy texture rarely seen in the species. Like the wild plant, this is a low, spreading, colony-forming evergreen of the fire-adapted pinelands of the southeastern United States, once listed as Myrica pusilla and now placed in the genus Morella.
The Nagami kumquat is the easiest citrus most gardeners will ever grow, and the only one meant to be eaten peel and all. Clusters of small, oval, sunset-orange fruit hang against dense, glossy evergreen foliage, each one a burst of contrast: a sweet, tender rind wrapped around bright, tart pulp. Pop them whole for a sweet-and-sour snap, candy the rinds, slice them into a salad, or simmer the winter harvest into jewel-toned marmalade.
Grown for the leaf rather than the flower, 'Goshiki' is the most colorful of the holly osmanthus. The name means five colors in Japanese, and the spiny, holly-like evergreen leaves earn it: flecked and mottled with cream and yellow against dark green, and flushed at every new growth with startling pink and orange that slowly settles to gold and green. The species name heterophyllus, from the Greek for different-leaved, fits the whole clan, whose juvenile leaves bristle with holly teeth while older ones smooth to entire margins.
Among the false hollies, 'Rotundifolius' is the gentle contrarian. Where the species arms the youthful leaves with fierce holly spines, this old form lays them down entirely: the leaves are small, thick, and rounded, nearly circular and spineless, a heavy, puckered dark green that reads more like boxwood or a miniature bergenia than an osmanthus. The oddity is the whole appeal, a curiosity that stops a plantsman mid-path.
Pieris phillyreifolia, the climbing fetterbush, is one of the strangest and most wonderful of Southeastern natives, an evergreen member of the heath family with a habit unlike any other hardy shrub. In cultivation the plant grows as a neat, small evergreen shrub of two to three feet, clothed in narrow, leathery dark green leaves about an inch long.
Pieris ryukyuensis is the lily-of-the-valley shrub of the Ryukyu Islands, the warm archipelago that trails south from Japan toward Taiwan, and 'Temple Bells' is a choice selection of this heat-tolerant species. The glossy, slightly toothed evergreen leaves emerge a warm bronze and mature to deep green, giving a polished, year-round presence on a dense, rounded frame of three to six feet.
Piloblephis rigida, wild or Florida pennyroyal, is a compact evergreen native mint from the sandy scrublands and pine flatwoods of Florida. The plant forms a low, tidy mound of fine, needle-like foliage that carries a clean, resinous, minty fragrance, released at a brush of the hand or on a warm afternoon in the sun.
Hardiness
Zones 8–10
Light
Full Sun
Height
1–2 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, topical applications, general wellness
The procimequat is a rare and fascinating citrus hybrid, born from a botanical marriage of the Eustis limequat (itself a cross of kumquat and lime) and the Hong Kong kumquat (Fortunella hindsii). The result is a precocious, compact plant that combines the zesty lime tang of the limequat parent with the tiny, ornamental charm of the wild kumquats, all on a frame small enough for a patio pot.
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.
Rhododendron atlanticum, the coastal or dwarf azalea, is a low, colony-forming native of the open pine woods and sandy flatwoods of the mid-Atlantic and Carolina coastal plain. Unlike the tall wild azaleas of the mountains, this species stays close to the ground, often no higher than the knee, and spreads by underground runners, or stolons, into broad, drifting colonies. The bluish, glaucous foliage is a hallmark, cool and sea-gray, and the species name atlanticum simply marks the plant's home along the Atlantic seaboard. The genus name Rhododendron means rose tree in Greek; azalea comes from azaleos, meaning dry, a fitting root for a shrub of sandy, well-drained ground.
Fragrant sumac is a versatile deciduous shrub native across much of the eastern and central United States, where the plant threads scattered woodlands, rocky slopes, and open banks. The trifoliate leaves, often mistaken at a glance for poison oak, are entirely harmless, and a crushed leaf releases the clean, lemony-resinous scent that gives the plant every one of the common names, from fragrant sumac to skunkbush, depending on the nose. The genus name Rhus is the old Greek and Latin word for the sumacs, and the epithet aromatica names the scent directly.
Hardiness
Zones 3–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
4–6 ft.
Spread
4–6 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
digestive health, topical applications, general wellness
'Cherry Queen' is a North Carolina-bred salvia from one of the most important salvia hybridizers America has produced. The cross is a deliberate one, between Salvia greggii, the autumn sage of the Texas and Mexican borderlands, prized for drought tolerance and a six-month bloom, and Salvia blepharophylla, a Mexican species whose name, eyelash-leaved sage, comes from the tiny fringe of hairs at the edge of each leaf (Greek blepharon, eyelash, and phylla, leaves). Blepharophylla carries the most saturated, signal-bright red flower in the whole genus, but the plant spreads by stolons in ways most gardeners do not want and resents cold winters, while greggii brings the bones and the durability. The breeder who put the two together was Dr. Richard "Rich" Dufresne of Candor, North Carolina, an organic chemist who became, more or less by accident, the leading American breeder of woody salvias for the eastern climate. Dufresne died in December 2018, leaving a body of work that includes 'Cherry Chief', 'Maraschino', and this selection, which Plant Delights Nursery called the most brilliant red they had ever seen on any hardy salvia.
Sarcococca confusa, sweet box, is one of the great winter-fragrance shrubs, a compact evergreen of the boxwood family grown for a perfume out of all proportion to the flowers that carry it. In the depths of winter the small, tassel-like, creamy white flowers open along the stems, tucked among the leaves and easy to miss by eye, but their sweet, honeyed scent carries yards on a mild day and stops passersby in their tracks.
Sarcococca orientalis is a fragrant, uncommon sweet box from China, a compact evergreen of the boxwood family grown, like its kin, for a winter perfume far larger than the flowers that carry it. In late winter small white flowers open along the stems, modest to the eye but richly and sweetly scented, filling a still, mild day with fragrance and giving the shade garden a lift when little else stirs.
