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.
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.
'Chapmanii Wonder' is an uncommon and rewarding evergreen rhododendron, the offspring of an inspired cross made by a Japanese breeder between two very different parents. From the endangered Florida native Chapman's rhododendron, Rhododendron chapmanii, the plant inherits broadleaf evergreen foliage and Deep South heat tolerance; from the hardy white-flowered form of Rhododendron dauricum, a species of northeastern Asia, the plant takes cold hardiness and early bloom. The species name dauricum points to Dauria, the region of southeastern Siberia where that parent grows wild, while chapmanii honors Alvan Wentworth Chapman, the nineteenth-century botanist of the Southern flora.
'Balsaminaeflorum' is a dwarf evergreen Satsuki azalea, an old Japanese cultivar of Rhododendron indicum grown for flowers that look less like azaleas than like tiny roses. Each bloom is fully double, packed with forty or more petals and carrying neither pistil nor stamens, so the flower is all soft, ruffled color. The cultivar name means balsam-flowered, a nod to the double blooms of the garden balsam, while indicum, meaning of India, is an old misnomer for a plant that is in fact Japanese.
A three-hundred-year-old Japanese garden azalea that does not look quite like a rhododendron, does not look quite like an azalea, and does not really look like anything else. The leaves are narrow green ribbons, three to five millimeters wide and a couple of inches long, closer to willow or fine grass than to the broad rounded foliage of an ordinary tsutsuji. The flowers, opening in late April and May, follow the same grammar: deeply divided into long strap-like petals in lilac-pink to lavender-rose, tangled and knotted at first, then unfurling slowly into a shape that reads, depending on the eye, as a crane fly, a spider, or a piece of decorative garnish. Wabi-sabi made evergreen.
Jetbead is an old-fashioned, exceptionally tough deciduous shrub of the rose family, forming an open, multi-stemmed mound roughly three to six feet tall and four to nine feet wide on arching gray-brown stems. The opposite, sharply toothed leaves break very early in spring, and four-petaled white flowers about two inches across open at the shoot tips in May and June. Clusters of three or four glossy black drupes follow in fall and hang on well into winter, the shining beads that give jetbead the common name.
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
Rubus coronarius, often called the Easter Rose, is one of those plants that gently refuses categorization. Botanically the species sits squarely among the brambles, a blackberry relative, yet in bloom the shrub bears no resemblance to anything prickly or wild. In place of the usual bramble flower comes a flush of large, fully double white blooms that read far more like heirloom roses than raspberries, each one softly luminous and timed, in the mildest springs, to open around Easter, from which the common name follows.
Ruscus aculeatus, Butcher's Broom, is a low evergreen shrub of the asparagus family, native to the woodlands of southern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, and reaching north into the milder parts of the British Isles. What look like glossy, spine-tipped leaves are not leaves at all but flattened stems called cladodes, which take over the work of photosynthesis while the true leaves are reduced to tiny scales. The generic name comes from the Latin ruscum, the old word for a butcher's broom, and the epithet aculeatus means prickled, for the sharp point that tips each cladode.
'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.
Sarcococca ruscifolia, the fragrant sweet box, is an evergreen shrub of the boxwood family, native to China and East Asia, grown for a winter perfume that belies the tiny flowers that carry it. In late winter and early spring the small, creamy white flowers open along the glossy stems, easy to overlook by eye but powerfully sweet on the air, and unlike the black-fruited sweet boxes, this species follows the flowers with glowing red berries.
Among the winter-flowering shade shrubs, few reward a cold-season garden as generously as Sarcococca wallichii, the Himalayan sweet box. The genus name joins the Greek sarco, flesh, with kokkos, berry, a nod to the fleshy fruits that follow the flowers, while the species honors Nathaniel Wallich, the Danish surgeon-botanist who superintended the Calcutta botanic garden in the early nineteenth century and sent so many Himalayan plants west. Sarcococca belongs to the box family, Buxaceae, and shares that clan's patience: dense, slow, and evergreen, with the quiet good manners of a plant built for the long haul.
Serissa foetida 'Kowloon', now more correctly placed as Serissa japonica, is a small, dense evergreen shrub known by a string of affectionate names: snow rose, tree of a thousand stars, and Japanese boxthorn. The genus stands alone in the coffee family, Rubiaceae, a surprising cousin to coffee, gardenia, and pentas. The unlovely species name foetida records the one fault, since bruised leaves and roots give off a faintly unpleasant smell, a small price for so much charm.
Shibataea kumasaca is the most civilized of bamboos, a low, dense, evergreen kind grown for tidy structure rather than height. The short, broad, oval leaves are unusual for a bamboo, closer to the foliage of ruscus or a small shrub than to the fine blades most bamboos wear, which is why the plant goes by ruscus-leaf bamboo. Growing to about four or five feet, the canes zigzag gently from node to node, giving a second common name, zig-zag bamboo.
American snowbell is one of the quiet delights of the Southeastern wetlands, usually a graceful multi-stemmed deciduous shrub, though the plant can be trained up into a small single-trunked tree. Along streamsides and in low, wet ground from the coastal plain through the interior South, the shrub carries slender branches that hang, in spring, with rows of small, bell-shaped white flowers, faintly fragrant and nodding on fine stalks so the whole plant seems trimmed in tiny lanterns.
Syringa meyeri 'Palibin', the dwarf Korean lilac, is a Southern-friendly lilac with old-world charm and clouds of spring fragrance. For gardeners who have long admired the lilac's perfume but found themselves too far south to grow one with confidence, this compact deciduous shrub offers the romance of the traditional lilacs, dense clusters of icy-pink to pale lavender bloom, without the northern fussiness.
Copper Canyon daisy is a big, aromatic, autumn-flowering marigold from the mountains of southern Arizona and adjacent northern Mexico, grown as much for the scent as the show. Brush against the finely divided, fern-like foliage and the plant releases a strong, distinctive fragrance, a mix of citrus, anise, and marigold that some find intoxicating and others frankly pungent. Tagetes lemmonii builds a soft, shrubby mound three to four feet high and wider still.
