Growing Zone 5

Nectarines are peaches without the fuzz - firmer, more aromatic, and ripening right in the heart of Alabama's summer fruit season.Nectarines grow like peaches here and want the same conditions: full sun, fast drainage, and a variety matched to our roughly 600-800 chill hours,...

Mulberries crop heavily within a few years, feeding your family and every songbird in the county with sweet berries through late spring.Mulberries are practically carefree in Alabama - fast growing, drought tolerant once established, and unbothered by the disease pressure that plagues stone fruit....

Elderberry gives you creamy summer flower plates, dark berry clusters for syrup and jelly, and a native shrub pollinators and songbirds work all season.American elderberry is a fast, suckering native shrub that tolerates the damp, heavy spots most fruit refuses - ditch edges, creek...

Blackberries are the easiest fruit you can grow in Alabama - a short row of thornless canes yields gallons of berries by early summer.Modern thornless erect varieties like 'Ouachita', 'Natchez', and 'Navaho' were bred for Southern heat and humidity and need no trellis, just...

Apricots ripen sweeter off your own tree than anything shipped, and the pink-white spring bloom arrives weeks before the rest of the orchard wakes up.Apricots are the trickiest stone fruit for the Deep South: most standard varieties want 700-1,000 chill hours, and the ones...

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,...

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...

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....

Rose of Sharon delivers big tropical-looking hibiscus flowers from midsummer to frost, exactly when most flowering shrubs have quit for the year.Rose of Sharon is an upright deciduous shrub that blooms through the hottest part of the season in white, pink, lavender, or blue,...

Ninebark gives you burgundy, gold, or lime foliage from spring to fall, white flower clusters in May, and peeling winter bark.Ninebark is a native, four-season shrub grown mainly for its colored foliage, with clusters of white or pink flowers in late spring and shredding,...

Mountain laurel opens clusters of cupped pink and white flowers in late spring above leathery evergreen leaves that hold their looks all winter.Mountain laurel is a native evergreen of Appalachian slopes, prized for intricately marked flowers and handsome year-round foliage. Be honest with yourself...

Flowering quince lights up the bare end of winter with scarlet, coral, or white blossoms on leafless branches weeks before anything else opens.Flowering quince is an old Southern dooryard shrub that blooms in late winter, long before its leaves appear, and its cut branches...

Clematis climbs a trellis or lamppost and opens saucer-sized flowers in purple, pink, red, or white through the warm months.Clematis is the classic flowering vine, with large single or double blooms held on wiry stems that scramble up any support you give them. The...

Butterfly bush throws long nectar-loaded flower spikes from early summer to frost and pulls in swallowtails, hummingbirds, and bees all day.Butterfly bush is a fast, sun-loving shrub whose arching stems carry fragrant flower panicles in purple, pink, white, or blue for months. Deadheading keeps...

Enormous crimson-freckled white and pink trumpets carry a perfume that fills a whole yard at dusk in high summer.Oriental lilies are workable in zone 8a but they are particular: give them sharp drainage on a raised bed or slope, morning sun with afternoon shade,...

Arching stems hang with white bells tipped in green, ringing out over strappy foliage in a long, generous late-winter to spring display.This is the standout bulb on our list for the Deep South and a true Southern heirloom, found thriving around old homeplaces and...

Jewel-toned violet and blue iris flowers with gold signal marks open at ankle height in the dead of winter, absurdly early and beautifully scented.Plant the small bulbs four inches deep near a walk or in a trough, where their February flowers can actually be...

Goblet-shaped lavender-pink flowers erupt from bare ground on leafless stems in early fall, a genuine surprise in the September garden.Colchicum corms bloom within weeks of arrival on naked stems, with the broad strappy foliage following in spring and dying away by early summer. Two...

Sheets of upfacing sky-blue stars with white eyes light up bare late-winter ground while the rest of the garden is still asleep.Plant these small bulbs three inches deep in generous drifts, since their charm comes entirely from mass, not from individual flowers. Glory of...

Low carpets of starry blue, pink and white daisies open across the late-winter garden weeks before anything else wakes up.Soak the flat, knobby corms overnight before planting, then set them just two inches deep in a well-drained bed where they can catch early sun...