The Best Window All Year

Grow the melons no store carries: Charentais, Galia, Canary, and Piel de Sapo, picked ripe and perfumed enough to scent an entire kitchen.Specialty melons are the same species as cantaloupe and want the same conditions, but the ripeness cues differ by type and that...

Strawberries fruit their first season from a small bed or a few containers, and homegrown berries taste nothing like the firm shipping types.In Alabama the traditional method is an annual planting: set June-bearing plants like 'Chandler', 'Camarosa', or 'Sweet Charlie' in the fall, mulch...

Tea olive scents an entire yard with apricot-sweet fragrance in fall and spring while working year-round as a dense evergreen screen.Tea olive, or sweet olive, is a broadleaf evergreen with small, inconspicuous cream flowers that carry an extraordinary fragrance across long distances. It grows...

The Toad Lily surprises late in the season with exotic, orchid-like speckled blooms that light up shady corners.Toad Lily is nursery-grown by Wade Greens in Lineville, Alabama, cared for by hand and shipped healthy and ready to thrive. Offered in 4" and 6" pots,...

Tulips deliver the definitive splash of spring color in nearly every shade imaginable - plant in fall for a breathtaking display.Tulip Bulbs is nursery-grown by Wade Greens in Lineville, Alabama, cared for by hand and shipped healthy and ready to thrive. Sold in pack...

Viburnums stack three seasons into one shrub: spring flower clusters, summer berries that feed birds, and reliable fall color or evergreen structure.Viburnum is a large and varied group ranging from fragrant deciduous types to dense evergreen screening shrubs, all of them dependable landscape plants....

Grow a real Southern watermelon: crisp, dripping, deep-red flesh cut warm from the field, the way a shipped melon has never once tasted.Watermelon is a sprawling heat-lover perfectly suited to Alabama summers, and it needs full sun, warm soil, and serious space to run....

Weigela loads its arching branches with rosy trumpet flowers in late spring, and hummingbirds work it from the first day it opens.Weigela is an easygoing deciduous shrub covered in pink, red, or white tubular flowers in late spring, with many modern varieties reblooming lightly...

Willow and Nuttall oaks grow shade fast for oaks, drop small tidy leaves, and hand the yard deep red color every November.These two native red-group oaks are the practical choice for large shade in the South. Willow oak has narrow, willow-like leaves that rake...

Witch hazel opens spidery yellow flowers in late fall and winter when nothing else is blooming, then turns clear gold each autumn.Witch hazel is a large native shrub or small multi-stemmed tree that flowers on bare or nearly bare branches in the cold months,...

Yarrow blooms in flat colorful clusters through the worst of summer, thriving on drought and poor soil where fussier perennials give up.Ferny aromatic foliage and long-lasting flower heads in white, gold, red, and terracotta make yarrow a workhorse for hot, dry, unirrigated beds, and...