Acca sellowiana, the pineapple guava, is that rare plant that is handsome enough for the border and generous enough for the kitchen. It came to botanical notice through the German naturalist Friedrich Sellow, who collected it in southern Brazil in 1819, and it carries his name still; for years it was known, and is often still sold, as Feijoa sellowiana. Its true home is the subtropical highlands of southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and northern Argentina, and from there it has traveled to warm gardens the world over.
Eastern bluestar is the bluestar most gardeners know, a robust native perennial with broader, willowy oval leaves and the clear blue, star-shaped flowers that name the genus, carried in clusters at the stem tips in spring. Amsonia tabernaemontana grows happily in deep, moist soil in part shade, and rewards almost any reasonable site with bloom and easy good health.
Flame acanthus, better known as hummingbird bush, is a tough, airy deciduous shrub for hot, dry places, hung from late spring until frost with slender orange to red tubular flowers that ruby-throated hummingbirds cannot resist. Small, pointed leaves give a light, open texture, and the long bloom season makes Anisacanthus wrightii one of the best hummingbird plants for the southern garden.
A pumpkin-orange selection of the classic flame acanthus, Anisacanthus wrightii 'Pumpkin' trades the usual scarlet for warm, glowing orange, lighting the late-season garden with the same slender, tubular, hummingbird flowers. The clone was discovered at the San Antonio Botanic Garden and is generally taken to be the selection known as 'Pumpkin'.
Swamp milkweed brings beauty and biodiversity to the moist garden. Asclepias incarnata is a native perennial prized for domed clusters of rosy pink, vanilla-scented flowers and for a vital role in feeding pollinators, native to wet meadows, streambanks, and lowland prairies across much of North America. The plant takes happily to rain gardens, wet soils, and sunny borders alike, a natural for the ecologically minded gardener.
Smooth aster is one of the cleanest and most dependable of the fall natives, and 'Bluebird' is among the best forms. Aster laevis 'Bluebird' builds an upright, vase-shaped clump of smooth, blue-green foliage, then opens, in late summer and fall, sprays of violet-blue daisies centered in gold, a generous late feast for bees and butterflies as the season winds down.
Aromatic aster is the toughest and most fragrant of the fall asters, and 'Raydon's Favorite' is the classic selection. Aster oblongifolius 'Raydon's Favorite' forms a dense, rounded mound of small leaves that release a clean, balsam-like scent when brushed, and in early to mid fall vanishes under a haze of lavender-blue, gold-centered daisies.
Baptisia alba, white wild indigo, is a striking native perennial of tall spires of white, pea-like flowers over deep blue-green foliage. Native to the eastern and central United States, the species carries a rich history as a dye plant, used by Native American peoples and early settlers as a substitute for true indigo, and the genus name, from the Greek bapto, to dip, records that role.
When Woodlanders began in 1980, this was about the only Baptisia known to gardeners; we went on to introduce many of the species that have since become popular garden perennials. Baptisia australis, blue wild indigo, is a long-lived native, essentially a prairie plant of open glades on limestone soil, with handsome olive-green compound leaves topped in spring by spikes of bright indigo-blue, pea-like flowers.
Baptisia megacarpa, the Apalachicola or bigpod wild indigo, is a rare and remarkable native of the floodplains and forested slopes of the Florida Panhandle, southeastern Alabama, and southwestern Georgia. The species grows on sandy ridges and stream terraces in the Chattahoochee River drainage, finely tuned to that particular corner of the South.
Baptisia sphaerocarpa, yellow wild indigo, is the sunny member of the wild indigo clan, a tough, rounded native perennial topped in spring with short, dense spikes of clear bright yellow, pea-like flowers over fresh blue-green foliage. Compact and shrubby, the plant brings strong color and structure to a sunny border.
Buddleja salviifolia, the sage-leaf butterfly bush, is a medium to large evergreen shrub from the sun-soaked hillsides of South Africa, and despite the exotic origin the plant has proven remarkably hardy in southeastern gardens, coming through winters at the University of Georgia's Athens trials with quiet resilience.
Hardiness
Zones 7–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
10–12 ft.
Spread
8–10 ft.
Bloom
Purple
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
respiratory support, digestive health, topical applications, general wellness
Callicarpa americana 'Bok Tower' is the white-fruited form of the American beautyberry, swapping the species' electric magenta for clusters of clean, pearly white berries that ring the arching stems in late summer and fall. The pale fruit is cool and luminous, lovely against the green leaves and a striking foil to the purple-berried kinds, and just as good for the birds.
Pine-leaved bottlebrush earns the name honestly: the foliage is fine, stiff, and needle-like, closer to a young pine than to the broad leaves of most bottlebrushes, and the whole shrub stands upright and a little spare, which is part of the charm. Native to southeastern Australia, this species is uncommon in cultivation in the southern United States, so growing one is a small act of plant collecting.
Among the many bottlebrushes, most of which flower fire-engine red, Callistemon viridiflorus goes a different way, opening in greenish yellow brushes over short, prickly evergreen leaves. Native to Tasmania, this is one of the cold-hardier members of the genus and may hold to zone 7.
Buttonbush is a rounded, deciduous native shrub, easily trained as a small multi-stemmed tree, grown for the curious globe-shaped flowers that give the plant its name. From early summer into fall, creamy-white pincushion balls about an inch across stud the branches, each a sphere of tiny tubular flowers with projecting styles that lend a fireworks effect, intensely fragrant and alive with bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
Hardiness
Zones 5–10
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
6–12 ft.
Spread
6–8 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
pain relief, general wellness, detoxification & cleansing, topical applications
Ceratostigma willmottianum, the Chinese plumbago, is a small deciduous subshrub grown for one of the truest blues in the garden. From midsummer into autumn the wiry, bristly-leaved stems carry clusters of intense cobalt-blue flowers, each a slim reddish-purple tube opening to five pale-blue lobes, and as the season cools the foliage turns a rich red and bronze, so that blue flower and crimson leaf often share the plant at once.
The native fringetree is one of the great small trees of the southern spring. Chionanthus virginicus, a deciduous large shrub or small tree, often multi-stemmed, hangs the whole canopy with fleecy, drooping panicles of narrow white petals in spring, soft as torn paper and lightly fragrant, a look that earned the old country names old man's beard and grancy graybeard. On female plants the flowers give way to clusters of raisin-sized, deep blue-purple fruits that birds take quickly.
Native to the open prairies and meadows of North America, Coreopsis lanceolata, the lanceleaf coreopsis, has long been admired for bright, golden-yellow blooms and an easy, hardy nature. This perennial wildflower has been a staple of North American landscapes for a very long time, growing across a wide range of climates and soils, from sandy coastal ground to the rich prairies of the Midwest.
This elegant small tree carries a graceful, vase-shaped habit that rounds out with age. Blooming two to three weeks after Cornus florida, the kousa dogwood opens striking, pointed flower bracts in late spring to early summer, extending the dogwood season. The bracts surround clusters of tiny true flowers in a star-like display that sets this dogwood apart.
