Sun Lovers

3-Gallon - Pick Up Only

Hardiness

Zones 9–11

Light

Full Sun

Height

10–20 ft.

Spread

8–15 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Tree

This is a cold-hardy citrus hybrid bred to carry oranges into gardens too cold for ordinary citrus, a cross between the trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata, in the large-flowered form called 'English Large', and the notably hardy Changsha mandarin, Citrus reticulata. Both parents are prized for cold tolerance, and stacking the two produces a small, thorny tree that shrugs off freezes that would kill a true orange. The cross matches the well-known US-852 citrandarin, a hardy-citrus line from the USDA breeding program.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun

Height

8–15 ft.

Spread

6–10 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Tree

Hedychium coccineum 'Disney' is a hardy ginger lily that brings the tropics to a temperate garden, sending up tall leafy canes each summer and crowning them, from late summer into fall, with bold spikes of fragrant orange flowers. Each bloom throws out long, whiskery stamens for a bottlebrush effect, and the whole spike carries a sweet perfume that drifts on warm evening air. 'Disney' is among the best and most upright selections of the scarlet ginger lily, holding the flower heads proudly above the foliage.

Hardiness

Zones 7–10

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

5–7 ft.

Spread

2–3 ft.

Bloom

Orange

Plant type

Perennial

Heptacodium miconioides, the seven-son flower, is a large, fountain-shaped shrub or small tree that saves its best for the tail of the year, when most of the garden is winding down. In late summer, tiered clusters of small, fragrant, creamy-white flowers open in whorls of seven, the arrangement behind both the botanical and common names. Bees and butterflies work the late flowers gratefully, in a season when little else is on offer.

Hardiness

Zones 5–8

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

10–20 ft.

Spread

6–8 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Hibiscus grandiflorus, the swamp rose mallow, is a magnificent native perennial of the southeastern United States, grown for enormous soft-pink blooms and broad, velvety, gray-green leaves. Rising to eight or ten feet on stout stems, the plant brings a lush, almost tropical presence to the summer garden, at home in a wetland but just as striking in an ordinary bed or beside a pond.

Hardiness

Zones 7–10

Light

Full Sun

Height

8–10 ft.

Spread

3–4 ft.

Bloom

Pink

Plant type

Perennial

Woodlanders has long championed hardy citrus, the trifoliate hybrids that push oranges and their kin well beyond the usual citrus belt, and 'Benton' is one of the toughest of the group. The plant is a citrange, a deliberate cross between the sweet orange, Citrus sinensis, and the hardy trifoliate orange, Poncirus trifoliata, that legendary deciduous, thorny survivor of cold-country citrus breeding. The name citrange simply fuses citrus and orange, and the hybrids inherit the trifoliate orange's remarkable cold tolerance.

Hardiness

Zones 6–10

Light

Full Sun

Height

10–15 ft.

Spread

8–10 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Few native bulbs command a wet margin the way Hymenocallis liriosme does. From a basal fountain of arching, strap-shaped, glossy green leaves rise leafless scapes, each crowned with several large white flowers whose narrow segments splay outward like pale spider legs around a central membranous cup. The fragrance arrives at dusk, sweet and carrying, a signal to the night-flying moths that pollinate the blooms in late spring and early summer.

Hardiness

Zones 7–10

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

1–2 ft.

Spread

1–2 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Perennial

Woodlanders has long led the way in offering cold-hardy citrus, the kinds that carry fruit well beyond the usual citrus belt, and Ichang Lemon is a favorite of the group. The plant grows as a medium, evergreen small tree with large leaves on winged petioles and thorny branches, opens the fragrant white flowers typical of citrus in spring, and follows with very large, lemon-yellow, fragrant fruit.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun

Height

10–12 ft.

Spread

6–8 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Tree

The Indio mandarinquat is one of those happy accidents that citrus breeding throws up now and then, a natural cross between a mandarin (Citrus reticulata) and a kumquat (Citrus japonica) that borrows the best of both parents. From the mandarin come the size, the deep orange color, and the perfume; from the kumquat come the sweet, tender, wholly edible rind and a welcome measure of cold tolerance. The fruits hang like small golden lanterns against dark evergreen leaves through winter, oblong and glossy, and the whole tree carries a poise that belies how easy the plant is to grow.

Hardiness

Zones 8–11

Light

Full Sun

Height

6–10 ft.

Spread

6–8 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Itea virginica, the Virginia sweetspire, is a native shrub of the wetlands, streambanks, and floodplains of the eastern United States, from New Jersey to Florida and west to Texas. Sometimes called Virginia willow for the shape of the leaves, though the plant is no willow at all, the species is prized for arching, fragrant white flower spikes in early summer and for a fall display of orange, red, and burgundy that rivals far showier shrubs. 'Henry's Garnet' is the selection that made the species a garden staple, free-flowering, with six-inch white racemes and a deep maroon-purple fall color that gives the plant its name.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

3–4 ft.

Spread

4–6 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

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.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

2–3 ft.

Spread

2–4 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

Itea virginica, the Virginia sweetspire, is a native shrub of eastern wetlands and streambanks, grown for fragrant white flower spikes in early summer and a fall display of red, orange, and burgundy. 'Longspire' is the selection chosen for its flowers: a form that carries notably long, white racemes, arching sprays of small fragrant blooms that outdo the wild plant for length and presence in early summer.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

4–6 ft.

Spread

4–6 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

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.

Hardiness

Zones 5–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

4–6 ft.

Spread

4–6 ft.

Bloom

Pink

Plant type

Shrub

Jasminum beesianum, the red jasmine or Bee's jasmine, breaks the mold of a genus known for white and yellow flowers. This vigorous, semi-evergreen twining climber from the mountains of Yunnan and Sichuan carries small, star-shaped blooms in a deep rose to velvet-red, an unusual color among the jasmines, softly and sweetly fragrant, opening in late spring over slender stems and small, pointed green leaves.

Hardiness

Zones 7–9

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

8–12 ft.

Spread

4–6 ft.

Bloom

Red

Plant type

Vine

Jasminum officinale, the poet's jasmine, is the classic hardy jasmine of old gardens, a vigorous twining vine hung with intensely fragrant white flowers through summer. 'Fiona Sunrise' is a gold-leaved form of that familiar plant, raised at Fromefield Nursery in England and registered under the cultivar name 'Frojas': the new leaves emerge a bright chartreuse-gold, lighting a trellis or fence, and soften to green as the season goes on, while the sweetly scented white flowers open from late spring into summer.

Hardiness

Zones 7–10

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

8–15 ft.

Spread

4–6 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Vine

Jasminum polyanthum, the pink jasmine or Chinese jasmine, is the most floriferous of the group, a fast, evergreen twining vine that smothers a support in late winter and spring with clouds of intensely fragrant white flowers opening from deep pink buds. Native to China, the plant is beloved wherever winters are mild for the sheer volume of bloom and a perfume strong enough to fill a garden or a room.

Hardiness

Zones 8–10

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

10–20 ft.

Spread

4–8 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Vine

The Lakeland limequat is a citrus lover's answer to cold: a compact, productive hybrid that pairs the hardiness of the kumquat with the bright, tropical punch of Key lime. One of three limequats bred by W. T. Swingle of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Florida in 1909 and named for the town of Lakeland, this cross (Citrus x floridana) joins the West Indian, or Key, lime with the round Marumi kumquat (Fortunella japonica). The result carries intense citrus flavor on a plant that thrives well beyond the usual citrus belt.

Hardiness

Zones 8–11

Light

Full Sun

Height

6–10 ft.

Spread

4–8 ft.

Bloom

White

Plant type

Shrub

No plant carries a heavier freight of story than Laurus nobilis, the bay laurel of the Mediterranean and the original laurel of the victor's crown. The genus name is simply the classical Latin for the tree, and the epithet nobilis means noble or renowned, a fair description of a plant whose leaves once crowned poets, athletes, and returning generals. The whole vocabulary of achievement still leans on this tree: a baccalaureate, a poet laureate, and the warning not to rest on one's laurels all trace back to the wreath of bay. In Greek myth the laurel was born of unrequited love, when the nymph Daphne, fleeing Apollo, was changed into a laurel tree by her father the river god; ever after the god wore the leaves in her memory, and the tree became sacred to him.

Hardiness

Zones 8–10

Light

Full Sun / Part Shade

Height

15–20 ft.

Spread

6–8 ft.

Bloom

Yellow

Plant type

Shrub

Traditional use

detoxification & cleansing, immune support, respiratory support, digestive health, mental & emotional well-being

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