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.
Imagine a shrub that looks like a conifer caught in an airy, pink-flowering daydream. Tamarix ramosissima, often called tamarisk or saltcedar, is a deciduous shrub or small tree with fine, scale-like leaves that read as cedar from ten feet away, yet drop in winter. That contradiction is the charm: conifer-like texture on a plant that is no conifer at all.
Silver germander is a Mediterranean evergreen grown above all for foliage. Teucrium fruticans wears small, aromatic, gray-green leaves backed in silvery white felt, on pale, white-woolly stems, so the whole shrub reads as a soft silver mound that lights a hot, sunny border and cools the greens around it. A member of the mint family, Lamiaceae, the plant carries the square stems and aromatic foliage of that clan.
Ugni molinae, the Chilean guava, is a small evergreen shrub of the myrtle family, native to the temperate forests of Chile and adjoining southern Argentina. Gardeners of an older generation will know the plant as Myrtus ugni, the name the shrub long circulated under. The genus name Ugni comes straight from uñi, the Mapuche word for the plant, while the species honors Juan Ignacio Molina, the Jesuit naturalist who first chronicled the flora of Chile; in the plant's homeland the shrub is simply murta or murtilla.
Darrow's blueberry is the silver-leaved evergreen of the group, a low, fine-textured native of the pine flatwoods and sandy scrub from southern Georgia through Florida to eastern Louisiana. The species honors George M. Darrow, the United States Department of Agriculture scientist whose breeding work built much of the modern blueberry, and the wild plant has passed its own heat tolerance into many of today's Southern highbush cultivars. 'John Blue' is a North Carolina State University selection chosen for looks as much as fruit, and the leaves are the reason.
Darrow's blueberry is the fine-leaved evergreen of the Southern blueberries, a low, glaucous native of the sandy pinelands from Georgia to Florida, named for George M. Darrow, the United States Department of Agriculture scientist whose work built much of the modern blueberry. Most plants carry the usual blue-green foliage, but 'Rosa's Blush' was chosen for something showier: new growth flushed with generous pink tints that light up the shrub, a character strongest in plants from Highlands County, Florida, and noted among several clones in the North Carolina State University breeding program.
Darrow's blueberry is the small-leaved evergreen of the Southern blueberries, a low native of the sandy pinelands of the Deep South, named for George M. Darrow of the United States Department of Agriculture, whose breeding work shaped the modern blueberry. Most plants of the species carry blue-green foliage, but 'Sebring' is a clone Woodlanders found in Highlands County, Florida and selected for the very small, bright green leaves that give the shrub a fine, tidy texture all its own.
Shiny blueberry is the little evergreen groundcover blueberry of the Southern Coastal Plain, a low, dense native rarely more than knee-high, spreading gently by rhizome into a fine, glossy-leaved mat. The species name myrsinites likens the small, lustrous leaves to those of myrtle, and the common name shiny blueberry says the same: the whole plant catches light on foliage barely an inch long.
Vaccinium sempervirens is one of the rarest plants in this catalog, an evergreen blueberry known in the wild from a single sandy corner of Lexington County, in the Sandhills of South Carolina. A true local endemic, the plant grows along Atlantic white cedar bogs and seepage slopes where the water table sits high and the sand stays acid, and to grow one is to hold a small piece of a landscape almost nobody has seen.
Small black blueberry is a low, delicate native of the sandy soils and pine barrens of the Southeastern coastal plain, a slender member of the heath family long gathered from the wild for its fruit. The species name tenellum means dainty or tender, a fair description of the fine stems and small leaves, and the common name points to the little dark berries that ripen almost black in late summer.
Mapleleaf viburnum does what almost no other native shrub will do: thrive in dry shade. Most of the eastern American natives that gardeners reach for, serviceberry, red buckeye, sweetshrub, oakleaf hydrangea, want steady moisture and at least a few hours of sun. Viburnum acerifolium is the one that walks into the dry, root-tangled, low-light pocket beneath an established oak or beech and simply gets on with the job. The native range is genuinely vast, from New Brunswick south to Florida and west to Texas and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in upland forests, rocky slopes, and the edges of bluffs, making this one of the most widespread and most underused native shrubs of eastern North America.
Walter's viburnum is one of the finest small evergreens of the Southern coastal plain, a fine-textured native named for Thomas Walter, the eighteenth-century Carolina planter and botanist who first described the species in his Flora Caroliniana. The botanical name obovatum points to the little obovate leaves, broadest toward the tip, and 'Compactum' gathers all of that into a low, rounded, mounding form densely set with small leaves and smothered in white flowers each spring.
A viburnum grown for the leaves rather than the flowers, and one of the rarest evergreens in the American nursery trade. Viburnum propinquum was described by the botanist William Hemsley in 1888 from the temperate forests of China, and the plant ranges through central and southern China, Taiwan, and north to Luzon in the Philippines. The species name comes from the Latin propinquus, meaning near or akin, a botanist's nod to the plant's close kinship with several related Asian viburnums. Woodlanders is among the very few nurseries anywhere to offer the Chinese evergreen viburnum.
A neat, dome-shaped evergreen bred for foliage and form. Viburnum x globosum is a garden hybrid between Viburnum calvum and the well-known Viburnum davidii, and 'Jermyn's Globe' was selected as the best seedling from a batch raised at the celebrated Hillier Nurseries in England around 1964, chosen for the way the plant rounds into a dense, self-shaping globe. The cultivar name honors Hillier's Jermyns arboretum in Hampshire.
A brightly variegated cousin of the chaste tree, grown for foliage as much as flower. Vitex trifolia, sometimes called the three-leaf chaste tree or Arabian lilac, is a warm-climate shrub of the mint family, native along tropical and subtropical coasts from eastern Africa through southern Asia to Australia and the Pacific. The species name trifolia points to the leaves, usually held in threes, and the selection 'Variegata' edges each gray-green leaflet in creamy white for a cool, luminous effect.
A timeless favorite with a bright twist. Weigela florida 'Variegata' is a compact, deciduous shrub grown for two gifts at once: cream-edged, softly variegated foliage and a late-spring flood of deep rose-pink, trumpet-shaped flowers. The genus honors the German botanist Christian Ehrenfried Weigel, and the species florida, meaning flowering, ranges as a wild plant through northern China, Korea, and Japan.
A charming citrus hybrid for containers, winter patios, and kitchen harvests. Known as the calamondin orange, x Citrofortunella mitis 'Calamondin' is a compact, cold-tolerant citrus treasured for abundant fragrant blossoms, ornamental good looks, and tart, edible fruit. A natural cross between the mandarin orange, Citrus reticulata, and the kumquat, Fortunella, calamondin is equally at home on a patio or in a bright kitchen window, offering both beauty and bounty the year round.
Yuzu Ichandrin is not a lemon. This is something older and considerably more interesting, a naturally occurring hybrid between Ichang papeda, Citrus ichangensis, and Satsuma mandarin, long cultivated across the high-elevation citrus regions of China and Japan, and among the most cold-hardy citrus in existence. Where standard yuzu, Citrus junos, and true lemons would surrender to a Southern winter, Ichandrin holds. Mature, established trees have come through ten degrees Fahrenheit with nothing worse than tip dieback. This is, by any honest measure, the citrus a zone 7 or 8 gardener actually gets to keep.
A rare gem of the Southeastern coastal plain, chosen for the bluest foliage of the tribe. Zenobia pulverulenta 'Woodlanders Blue' is a semi-evergreen shrub of the heath family, native to the pocosins and pine savannas of the coastal Carolinas, and grown above all for striking powder-blue, glaucous foliage and hanging clusters of white, bell-shaped flowers in early summer. Woodlanders selected and introduced this exceptionally blue form, which has since won wider recognition.
