Plants that turn their faces to the light. This is the roll call for the open, sun-struck parts of the garden, the borders and banks that bake from morning to evening, where the toughest, brightest, most floriferous plants do their best work.
Salvia darcyi, the Galeana sage, is a bold Mexican sage grown for one of the purest scarlets in the whole tribe of salvias, a color that reads across a garden and pulls hummingbirds from a distance. Through the heat of summer and well into fall, upright spikes of large, bright orange-red flowers rise above a mound of soft, gray-green, heart-shaped leaves that release a clean minty scent when brushed. Few tender salvias give so long or so vivid a show.
'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.
Salvia leucantha, the Mexican bush sage, is one of the great fall salvias, grown for arching wands of flower that seem spun from felt. Long spikes rise above the foliage in late summer and fall, densely packed with velvety purple calyces from which small white corollas emerge, a soft two-tone effect that catches low autumn light and holds for weeks. Few plants close the gardening year with such generous, easy color.
Salvia leucantha 'Midnight' is the all-purple form of the Mexican bush sage, and the difference is worth seeing. Where the common kind carries small white corollas against purple calyces, 'Midnight' drops the white altogether, so the long arching spikes read as pure, saturated purple from calyx to flower, a deeper and more solid color that carries even further across an autumn garden.
Salvia 'Anthony Parker' is a big, late-blooming hybrid sage with a charming South Carolina origin. The plant arose as a chance seedling in the Beaufort garden of the plantswoman Frances Parker, a cross between Salvia leucantha 'Midnight' and the pineapple sage Salvia elegans, and Frances rescued the young seedling from the path of the mower and named it for her grandson Anthony, then a year old, in 1994. From that lucky reprieve came one of the best late-season salvias for the South.
Salvia madrensis, the forsythia sage, is a big, robust perennial from the mountains of Mexico, grown for a late-season show of soft yellow. Broad, quilted, triangular leaves clothe stout, square, mint-family stems, and in fall the plant lifts terminal clusters of clear yellow flowers that recall a forsythia in bloom and give the sage its common name, an unusual color and a welcome one so late in the year.
Salvia mexicana, the big blue Mexican sage, is a tall, dramatic perennial grown for deep, saturated blue-violet flowers that arrive when the gardening year is winding down. The tubular blooms, set in contrasting calyces, are carried in long spikes above bold, heart-shaped leaves, and few plants bring so pure and deep a blue to the autumn garden.
Salvia microphylla 'Deltoid' is a shrubby form of the littleleaf or baby sage grown for warm salmon-coral flowers and neat, triangular, deltoid leaves. The small tubular blooms open over a long season and read as a soft coral against the fine, glossy foliage, a gentler tone than the hot scarlet of many littleleaf sages.
Salvia microphylla 'Hot Lips' is the famous temperature-shifting bicolor of the littleleaf sages, and the trick is worth the fame. In the cool of spring the flowers may open pure white or pure red, but as summer heat builds they turn strikingly two-tone, white below with a bold red lip, so that a single plant can carry white, red, and red-and-white flowers all at once. The show runs from late spring until frost.
Salvia uliginosa, the bog sage, is an airy, sky-blue perennial grown for clouds of clear, cool blue flowers held on tall, slender, branching stems from midsummer into fall. The species name uliginosa means of marshes, and the plant lives up to it, thriving in the moist ground most sages refuse, so the bog sage fills a niche few others in the genus can.
Salvia urticifolia, the nettleleaf sage, is an uncommon herbaceous perennial native to the Appalachians and the wider Southeast, grown for cool blue-to-violet flowers set off by a pair of white marks in the throat. The bloom comes in the freshness of mid to late spring, the flowers hovering above serrated, nettle-like leaves, and in a generous year a lighter second flush may follow in late summer.
Few native trees announce themselves as cheerfully as Sassafras albidum, whose leaves come in three shapes on the same branch: an unlobed oval, a two-lobed mitten, and a three-lobed silhouette like a splayed hand. A member of the laurel family, Lauraceae, and kin to bay, cinnamon, and spicebush, sassafras carries aromatic oils in every part, so that a snapped twig or crushed leaf releases a warm, root-beer sweetness. The common name traces back through Spanish to the colonial Southeast, where the tree was among the first American plants shipped to Europe as a marketable medicine.
×Schimlinia floribunda is one of the rarest woody plants a gardener can grow: a deliberate intergeneric hybrid between two members of the tea family, Theaceae, uniting the fabled Franklinia alatamaha with the Asian evergreen Schima argentea. The cross marries the ornamental drama and hardiness of Franklinia with the vigor, adaptability, and evergreen constitution of Schima, and the result carries large, camellia-like white flowers, glossy foliage, and an upright, well-furnished frame. The hybrid formula name honors both parents at once, Schima and Franklinia folded into a single word.
Showy skullcap earns the flattering half of the common name honestly: of the eastern woodland skullcaps, Scutellaria serrata carries some of the largest and most richly colored flowers. The genus name comes from the Latin scutella, a little dish or tray, for the small pouch on the upper side of the seed capsule that gives every skullcap its family resemblance. A member of the mint family, Lamiaceae, showy skullcap keeps the square stems and paired leaves of that clan, here with bright green, boldly toothed foliage often edged in wine-red.
Saw palmetto is the signature palm of the Deep South, a low, fan-leaved evergreen that carpets the pine flatwoods, scrub, and coastal dunes from the Carolinas through Florida and along the Gulf. The genus honors the American botanist Sereno Watson, and the species name repens, creeping, describes the sprawling habit, while the common name comes from the fierce saw-toothed edges that arm each leaf stalk. Serenoa repens is the only species in the genus, and among the most abundant plants in Florida.
A silver-blue jewel among native palms, this is the rare glaucous form of saw palmetto, the low fan palm that carpets the pine flatwoods and coastal plains of the Deep South. Most saw palmettos wear green leaves, but this selection, native chiefly to the east coast of Florida, holds fans of striking silvery blue, a metallic glaucous bloom that lifts the plant from a workhorse native to an ornamental of real presence.
Royal catchfly wears the most electric red in the native flora. Silene regia sends up leafy, upright stems two to four feet tall, topped in mid to late summer with loose clusters of brilliant scarlet, star-shaped flowers, each with five deeply notched petals. Few prairie plants flower in true red, and fewer hold that color through the heat of July and August, which makes this native a genuine standout.
Cup plant is a giant of the summer prairie, a statuesque perennial that rises on stout, square stems to eight feet or more and lifts a crown of bright yellow, daisy-like flowers above the border. The name comes from a quirk of the foliage: the large, coarse leaves are perfoliate, joined in pairs around the stem to form a shallow cup that catches and holds rainwater. Silphium perfoliatum belongs to the sunflower tribe of the aster family, Asteraceae, and shares that clan's generosity of bloom.
Hardiness
Zones 4–8
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
4–8 ft.
Spread
2–3 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
detoxification & cleansing, respiratory support, pain relief, digestive health
Sinojackia xylocarpa is a rare flowering treasure from the hills of eastern China, a deciduous small tree or large shrub that few gardeners have ever met. Known as the jacktree, the species belongs to the storax family, Styracaceae, a close cousin of the snowbells and silverbells, and carries the same poetry of spring: pendant, bell-shaped white flowers that dangle beneath arching branches like small antique lanterns swaying in a breeze.
