Browse Plants

'Brigadoon' is a new St. John's wort with brilliant chartreuse-yellow foliage that looks great next to dark-foliaged plants. It grows 12 to 16 inches tall and spreads quickly to about 2 feet wide, making it an excellent groundcover when planted in groups. In the sun, the small, oval leaves turn a dazzling orange-gold. The fuzzy, rather inconspicuous yellow flowers appear in midsummer. 'Brigadoon' tolerates heat, most any type of well-drained soil, and shade.

This is a small, upright, mounded, deciduous shrub with attractive, flaking reddish-brown bark on mature stems and striking, linear to oblong blue green leaves. Midsummer to early autumn, this plant bears golden yellow flowers with striking, bushy center stamens. Reddish-brown fruit capsules ripen in September and persist well into the winter. St. John's wort excels in the Midwest.

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This evergreen subshrub slowly spreads to form a tidy cushion of shiny dark green leaves. In late spring and early summer, numerous flattened clusters of 4-petaled snow-white flowers nearly cover the foliage. Iberis sempervirens makes an effective edging for a sunny border.

This vigorous evergreen holly bears abundant, shiny scarlet fruit. Use it as a screen, a background plant, or as a specimen.

Blue holly, so named for the glossy blue-green leaves, is a dense, vigorous shrub that can reach 15 feet tall and 10 feet wide. Insignificant flowers bloom in late spring. Female plants have glossy red fruit. There are many cultivars available.

This tall, pyramidal, evergreen tree may be grown as a large shrub. Its evergreen, spiny foliage is leathery and glossy. Insignificant, though fragrant, flowers bloom in spring followed by red, orange, or yellow drupes that attract birds. Many cultivars are available.

Chinese holly is a round, evergreen shrub with glossy, spiny leaves and large red berries. It grows to about 15 feet tall and wide.

This dense, evergreen holly reaches 6 to 10 feet tall and at least as wide. The species is rarely used in landscapes, but there are many cultivars available with more interesting shape and color. This plant grows slowly, but can be invasive. Its dark green leaves are lustrous and the black fruit is hidden beneath them, so it is not obvious as in other hollies. Use Japanese holly in foundation plantings, hedges, beds and borders, or formal gardens.

While the fresh green leaves and smooth, light gray stems are enough to make possumhaw holly an attractive shrub, the appeal of this plant is more evident in late fall. Bunches of small berries form along the branches and turn bright red as the leaves fall off. Only female plants bear fruit (plant at least one male plant for best berry production), which finally becomes palatable to wildlife in the early spring. Possumhaw tends to sucker from the roots, so it's best to allow it to form a multitrunk screen.

The inkberry holly has narrow, glossy, spineless leaves and tiny black fruits. The narrow foliage produces a much finer texture than that of many other hollies. A slow-growing, evergreen shrub native to eastern North America, it produces greenish white, inconspicuous flowers in spring, followed by jet black drupes the size of peas. The fruit can persist until the next spring unless eaten by birds. Ilex glabra is rather more casual in form than the spinier hollies and can be used in borders, around ponds, as foundation plantings, or in woodland gardens.

This compact deciduous holly reaches up to 8 feet tall with equal or greater spread. Pale yellow berries ripen in September and stand out on reddish-brown branches, persisting into early winter and attracting birds.

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This plant is a suckering shrub or small tree with toothed, pointy, bright green leaves. It bears white flowers in spring, which are followed by spherical dark red to scarlet berries that persist through the winter. Some fruit ripens to yellow or orange.

Yaupon holly is an upright, irregularly branched, evergreen shrub or small tree with ovate, toothed, shiny dark-green leaves and gray branches. Profuse, transluscent scarlet fruit persists through the winter.

Attractive, glossy, dark green leaves and red flowers are similar to those of Florida anise, but this plant flowers continuously from spring to fall. Red fruit follows.

Dime-sized, drooping, bell-shaped yellow flowers have a faint anise fragrance, but they’re hidden under new foliage in June. 

This deciduous shrub growing to 6 feet tall and 8 feet wide bears erect racemes of pea-like, pink flowers from summer to early fall above leaves composed of several leaflets. The flowers are followed by long, dark purple seed pods.

'Henry's Garnet' Virginia sweetspire is a very dependable, showy plant. It is an arching, 3- to 5-foot-tall shrub that holds its leaves well into fall, allowing the maroon, yellow, and orange tones to develop and reveal themselves over time. Virginia sweetspire also produces an early-summer show, featuring slender, drooping racemes of white flowers that attract all sorts of pollinating insects. Its suckering, slowly spreading, 6-foot-wide habit makes it a good choice for slopes and mass plantings.

Like the popular 'Henry's Garnet' Virginia sweetspire, Little Henry® has mildly fragrant white blooms in summer and red to orange leaf color in fall, but grows to just 2 to 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide. Use it in massed plantings, mixed borders, and containers. -Allan Armitage, Plants to know and grow, Fine Gardening issue #121

This slender, deciduous shrub has arching green shoots and dark green leaves divided into three oval-oblong leaflets. Solitary bright yellow flowers borne on leaf axils appear before the leaves in winter and early spring. They do not have the jasmine fragrance.