Native Hydrangeas

No other plant native to South Carolina has such fragrant and beautiful spring blooms and stunning fall color as the witch-alders. Fothergilla was named after Dr. John Fothergill, an English physician and gardener who funded the travels of John Bartram through the Carolinas in the 1700’s. These beautiful shrubs have been planted in both American and English gardens for over 200 years, including gardens of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

The study of native plants, the ecosystems of South Carolina, and sustainable landscaping practices form the focus of the South Carolina Native Plant Certificate Program. A partnership between the South Carolina Native Plant Society and the South Carolina Botanical Garden, this program gives participants insight into South Carolina’s rich and complex botanical heritage, and offers ways to bolster the states’ biodiversity. This program began in July 2015, and to-date over 300 participants from all over the state, from all walks of life, and of all different ages, have enrolled in the program.

Native grasses are an excellent choice for low-maintenance, attractive, and wildlife-friendly plants to add to your landscape. Their beauty is often more subtle than the color splashes of perennials and annuals but can add amazing depth and interest to the gardener’s palette. There are so many species of native grasses to choose from, and each one brings differing structure, texture, and color to the garden. Grasses give multi-season interest to the landscape. Perennial grasses mostly emerge in the spring and are at their peak in summer and tend to be happiest in full sun. Persistent seed heads provide structure and movement to the garden in the fall and well into the winter.

Utility companies have the thankless task of maintaining the right-of-way for above-ground utility lines to keep the power on. Gardeners and residents often gasp in horror upon seeing the tree and large shrub pruning performed to keep the lines clear. It is a necessary evil. But in many cases, following a ‘right plant in the right place’ mentality will avoid plants interfering with the lines.

At the beginning of the week, I noticed our native magnolias flowering profusely. First, the evergreen southern magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora), which line the entrance to the South Carolina Botanical Garden (SCBG), put on a show. Then, a few days later, one of our deciduous magnolias, the bigleaf, was covered in plate-sized flowers. In fact, the bigleaf (Magnolia macrophylla) has the largest simple leaf and flower of any native plant on the continent. Magnolias are an ancient plant, one of the earliest flowering trees (angiosperm) in the world. I love to think about these trees growing among the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period, around 100 million years.

Not so many years ago, most nurseries only carried the old-fashioned classic we call Pee Gee, for H. paniculata ‘Grandiflora’ (above), with giant conical trusses of white flowers in July that fade to pink and tan as autumn approaches. Perhaps you have a tree form?  It’s the kind of plant often “inherited” along with older houses, and I love passing big ones at nearby farms and gardens at this time of year.Lately, though, as with so many other plants, there’s a proliferation of available cultivars of panicle hydrangeas, and I have tried many good ones: ‘Kyushu,’ ‘Pink Diamond,’ ‘Unique,’ ‘Limelight’ (an unusual recent color break with greenish flowers), and more that I cannot even bother to r

Out of the leaf litter they ascend.When I purchased this native of woodsy streambanks in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon for my New York garden, it was still called Peltiphyllum peltatum. I have a thing for big-leaved plants (likeAstilboides, its cousinRodgersia, and even thuggishPetasites). I had to tryDarmera, whose leaves can reach 18 in

Rainer, who teaches planting design at George Washington University, writes the award-winning blog called Grounded Design. He has designed landscapes for the U.S. Capitol grounds; the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial; and The New York Botanical Garden, as well as more than 100 private gardens–always advocating for an ecologically expressive aesthetic that interprets rather than imitates nature.But he is also a keen—and daring–home gardener.“It’s really the garden scale that to me is the most fascinating,” he says, despite his years of experience on the far grander scale.We talked about garden design, and about the sometimes controversial and confusing debate around natives. Read along as you listen to the April 14, 2014 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the pl

But which ones to choose from among the daunting selection out there, and how to care for them, anyhow? I’m so often asked about the particulars of pruning and of soil chemistry when it comes to the genus Hydrangea, so for all those questions and more, I invited Chanticleer’s Eric Hsu to my public-radio program.Eric became plant information coordinator at Chanticleer in 2011, and before that came stints at some of the most prestigious woody-plant collections in the Eastern United States: Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College; the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, and the Polly Hill Arboretum on Martha’s Vineyard.He has his bachelor’s from Cornell, and master’s degrees from both the University of Reading in England, and the Universi

Wherever you garden, he has advice to help you think about what to look for in a garden-worthy native and more, and how to really define native, anyway. I learned the concept of ecoregions—about choosing plants not because I live within a particular county line on a manmade map, but instead guided by larger forces of geology and natural habitat.Read along as you listen to the July 23, 2018 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here). Plus: Enter to win a copy of the new book, by commenting at the bottom of the page.selecting garden-worthy native plants, with dan jaffeQ. I haven’t been to Garden in the Woo

WHEN YOU’RE TALKING plants and not people, how do you figure out who lives where? You can’t send census takers door to door to get a head count, but doing so is a critical step in devising conservation strategies in a changing world, among other key goals. A New York Botanical Garden botanist is coordinating such an effort.

“Hey, let’s make it another edition of our Desert Island Plants series on the radio show and podcast,” we decided. And so favorite natives of spring are the topic this week.Talking about our most-loved spring native woodland perennials—from blue cohosh (just emerging one April, above) and merrybells, to various trilliums and Virginia bluebells and more—is a perfect fit for Ken Druse. His books “The Natural Shade Garden” in 1992 and “The New Shade