Miccosukee gooseberry is one of the rarest shrubs in the Southeast, a federally threatened native known from just two places on earth: a single site in McCormick County, South Carolina, and another in Jefferson County, Florida. The low, arching shrub, two to four feet tall, carries spiny branches and forms small thickets on shaded hardwood-forest hillsides, and small, long-petaled, creamy flowers hang from the branches in their season, followed by half-inch greenish fruits armored with soft, flexible spines.
'Gro-Low' is the ground-hugging form of the native fragrant sumac, a low, wide-spreading deciduous shrub that stays one to two feet tall while reaching six to eight feet across, knitting into a dense, weed-smothering carpet. The glossy trifoliate leaves are often mistaken at a glance for poison ivy or poison oak but are entirely harmless, and a crushed leaf gives off the clean, lemony scent that names the species.
Hardiness
Zones 3–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
1–2 ft.
Spread
6–8 ft.
Bloom
Yellow
Plant type
Groundcover
Traditional use
digestive health, topical applications, general wellness
This is a remarkable early-blooming form of the sweet azalea, Rhododendron arborescens, the tall, hairless-twigged native prized for white summer flowers and an intense heliotrope perfume. Where the species is famous as one of the last azaleas to bloom, carrying fragrant white flowers with showy red stamens well into summer, this selection turns that timing on its head.
Sabal minor, the Dwarf Palmetto, is the hardiest of the native fan palms and the one most gardeners can grow. The palm stays essentially stemless, holding a low fountain of stiff, blue-green, fan-shaped leaves straight from the ground, with the growing point set safely at or below the surface. Erect fruiting stalks rise well above the foliage and carry small black fruit about a quarter inch across.
Rougeplant is a small, soft-stemmed perennial of the pokeweed family, native to Florida, Texas, and the warm Americas, grown for the long show of tiny flowers and the shining strings of bright red berries that follow. Where common pokeweed is coarse and towering, rougeplant is refined and knee-high or less, with small leaves and delicate, arching sprays that carry flowers and ripe fruit at the same time for months on end.
Hardiness
Zones 8–9
Light
Part Shade
Height
6–18 in.
Spread
8–12 in.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Perennial
Traditional use
respiratory support, topical applications, digestive health
The dwarf pink locust is a charming, little-known native shrub, a low, stoloniferous plant of one to two feet with compound, deciduous leaves and hanging clusters of pretty pink pea flowers in spring. Scattered through the sandy pinelands of the southeastern United States, the plant spreads quietly by underground runners into a low colony, since seed is virtually never set and the shrub increases almost entirely by vegetative means.
Rudbeckia grandiflora is the tall, wild aristocrat of the coneflowers, sending stiff stems three to six feet high above a clump of coarse, sandpapery leaves to carry large golden daisies through the heat of high summer. The ray flowers droop back from a prominent, dark chocolate-brown central dome in the loose, unbuttoned way of the prairie species, giving the flower a windblown grace that the stiff garden hybrids have long since bred out.
'Dawn at the River' is a fine selection of the native flame azalea, Rhododendron calendulaceum, one of the most spectacular of all the wild deciduous azaleas of the eastern mountains. The species blankets woodland slopes and high mountain balds through the southern Appalachians, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, where the famous flame-colored display draws pilgrims to places like Gregory Bald each June. The species name calendulaceum means resembling Calendula, the marigold, a nod to the vivid orange of the flowers, while the common name flame azalea catches both that fire and the way the upright buds stand like candle flames.
Rudbeckia maxima is the giant of the coneflowers, and grows nothing at all like a black-eyed Susan. From a bold basal rosette of huge, smooth, paddle-shaped leaves the color of blue-gray wax rise bare flower stems five to seven feet tall, each topped by a golden daisy whose drooping rays hang like a skirt beneath a strikingly tall, dark central cone. The effect, foliage and flower together, is pure architecture.
Littleleaf sumac is a big, bushy deciduous shrub of west Texas, the Southwest, and adjoining Mexico, built for heat, sun, and drought. The compound leaves are made up of tiny leaflets that give a fine, almost feathery texture, and they turn rose to purple in fall, an unusual and lovely tone among the sumacs. Tough and dryland-hardy, the plant is well worth trying in the South and any hot, well-drained garden.
Rudbeckia nitida is a tall, luminous coneflower that trades the coarse hairiness of the common black-eyed Susans for smooth, glossy, dark green leaves and hairless stems, the shining foliage that gives the species a name. From a leafy base rise slender stems three to five feet tall, each carrying a large yellow daisy whose soft rays droop back from a raised, greenish-brown central cone, blooming through the heat of mid to late summer.
'Woodlanders Evangeline' is our own selection of the southern, evergreen sweetbay magnolia, Magnolia virginiana var. australis, chosen for the qualities that make a sweetbay worth growing: glossy evergreen foliage, a shapely habit, and the clean, lemon-sweet fragrance for which the species is loved. Sweetbay is native across the moist ground of the eastern United States, and in the South grows into a graceful evergreen tree rather than the shrubby, deciduous plant of the North.
The swamp azalea, Rhododendron viscosum, ordinarily opens white; this selection breaks pink. 'Roseum' is a rose-flushed form of the familiar native, chosen and introduced by Woodlanders from a plant of Aiken County, South Carolina provenance, a home-ground selection that carries the sweet, clove-like fragrance of the species in a warmer color. The swamp azalea ranges widely across the eastern United States, from the Gulf Coast north into New England, threading the wet margins of swamps, bogs, and stream banks where few other flowering shrubs will follow.
'Florence' is a robust selection, possibly a hybrid, of the native Oconee azalea, Rhododendron flammeum, chosen and named by our friend Charles Webb of Superior Trees in Florida. The name honors Florence, Mr. Webb's wife, and both have long been good friends of ours. The plant traces back further still, to a group of azaleas that came originally from the late Aaron Varnadoe of Colquitt, Georgia, who collected, propagated, and shared so many fine native azaleas across the South.
Michaux's sumac is a low, colony-forming native shrub, rhizomatous and densely hairy, rising only one to three feet on erect stems from a spreading root system. The compound leaves turn beautiful shades of orange and red in fall, and the dwarf, running habit makes the plant a fine, well-behaved groundcover-scale sumac for a sunny to lightly shaded native planting.
Among the sweetbay magnolias there is a curious dwarf that most references overlook, though at Woodlanders we feel the plant deserves proper recognition. This form, Magnolia virginiana var. pumila, grows wild on the frequently burned pinelands of the southern Coastal Plain, and looks to be an adaptation to that fiery world: the plant stays small, begins flowering while very young and low, and spreads slowly by underground runners into a modest colony.
A red or scarlet flowered buckeye of the Gulf Coast, Aesculus splendens stands close to the red buckeye, Aesculus pavia, and may be no more than a striking form of that species. Dirr, in his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, notes that Rehder listed this buckeye as a distinct species and that several horticulturists feel strongly about the authenticity, the chief differences being scarlet flowers and leaves felted on the undersides. Native to Louisiana and perhaps other Gulf Coast states, the scarlet buckeye is grown much as the red buckeye is.
A low, often half-prostrate form of the red buckeye, Aesculus pavia var. humilis keeps to a small, spreading shrub where the typical red buckeye grows into a small tree. The scarlet spring flowers come in smaller panicles, and in every other respect the plant follows the species: lustrous palmate leaves that break early, a love of moist, well-drained woodland soil, and the same magnetism for returning hummingbirds.
A rare dwarf form of the Ohio buckeye, Aesculus glabra var. nana was found in just a few places in the hills of northern Alabama and northern Georgia, far south of the species' usual range. Where the typical Ohio buckeye climbs to thirty feet or more, this dwarf settles into a rounded shrub of about six feet, carrying the same handsome palmate leaves divided into finger-like leaflets that flush early and color in fall.
Summersweet has long been a shrub gardeners plant by the nose. Native to the moist woods and pond margins of the eastern United States, Clethra alnifolia earned the old country names Sweet Pepperbush and Summersweet for the honey-and-clove perfume that pours off the white summer spikes, a scent that carries clear across a garden on a warm afternoon. Colonists found a further use for the plant: the flowers, crushed in water, raise a soft lather, and were once pressed into service as a field soap.
