Growing Zone 6

Spires of waxy blue, pink or white bells rise through spring shade, turning the ground beneath hardwoods into a soft flowering haze.Spanish Bluebell is one of the few classic spring bulbs that genuinely thrives in the Deep South - it needs no winter chill,...

Nodding white teardrops on gray-green leaves push straight through cold January ground, the first flower of the year in most Alabama gardens.Wade Greens supplies Galanthus elwesii, the Giant Snowdrop, because it is the only snowdrop with a real chance in zone 8a - it...

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...

Autumn Blaze maple grows a broad shade canopy in just a few years and turns brilliant orange-red every fall, right on schedule.Autumn Blaze is a hybrid of red and silver maple that combines fast growth with the dependable scarlet fall color and stronger branching...

Leyland cypress screens a property line faster than almost any evergreen, adding three to four feet a year of soft, feathery green.Leyland cypress is the fastest privacy screen most Southern yards can grow, filling in low to the ground with fine, soft foliage that...

Juniper thrives where nothing else will - hot slopes, poor soil, salt, and drought - and stays evergreen and textural through it all.Juniper covers an enormous range of forms, from flat groundcover types that hold banks together to upright columns used as accents and...

'Nellie Stevens' builds a dense evergreen privacy screen fast and sets heavy red berries every winter without needing a male pollinator nearby.'Nellie Stevens' holly is the South's favorite screening holly, forming a broad dark green pyramid of glossy spined leaves and setting abundant red...

Boxwood shears into crisp hedges, spheres, and edging that hold their shape year-round and give a landscape instant formal structure.Boxwood is the classic evergreen for clipped hedges, parterres, and foundation lines, with small dense leaves that take shearing better than almost anything else. It...

Bald cypress handles standing water and dry ground alike, then closes the year with rust-orange fall needles before dropping them clean.Bald cypress is a native deciduous conifer with soft, feathery needles that turn coppery orange in autumn and fall, revealing a strong buttressed trunk...

'Green Giant' puts on three feet a year and builds a dense, deer-resistant evergreen wall without the disease headaches of Leyland cypress.'Green Giant' arborvitae is the modern standard for fast privacy screening, growing three to five feet per year into a tight pyramid of...

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...

Shasta daisies bring crisp white-and-gold blooms to summer borders and cut beautifully, lasting a week or more in a vase.This clumping perennial is a border classic that keeps flowering for weeks if you deadhead regularly, with compact varieties like 'Becky' standing up to Alabama...

Peonies produce enormous fragrant late-spring blooms on a plant that can outlive the gardener, returning larger every year with almost no care.Zone 8a is the warm edge of peony country: they need real winter chill to set buds, so in Clay County choose early-blooming...

Milkweed is the only plant monarch caterpillars can eat, so a few clumps turn a sunny bed into a working monarch nursery.Plant the right natives: butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) for dry, sunny, well-drained spots, and swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) for beds that stay moist...

Joe Pye weed towers at the back of a border with dusty-rose flower domes that swallowtails and monarchs cover through late summer.This big native perennial is the plant for damp, low spots where other perennials sulk, forming a strong upright clump topped with vanilla-scented...

Coreopsis pumps out golden daisies from late spring to frost on a native perennial that shrugs off heat, drought, and poor soil.Also called tickseed, coreopsis is one of the hardest-working perennials for Alabama sun, with threadleaf types like 'Moonbeam' and 'Zagreb' forming airy mounds...

Coral honeysuckle covers a mailbox or fence in scarlet trumpet flowers that hummingbirds visit from spring through frost, without ever taking over.This is our well-behaved native honeysuckle, not the aggressive Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) that smothers Alabama woodlands - coral honeysuckle is a modest...

Catmint blooms lavender-blue for months, thrives on neglect and drought, and bees work it constantly while deer and rabbits leave it alone.Catmint forms a soft gray-green mound that edges beds and walkways beautifully and reblooms strongly if you shear it back by about a...

Blazing star sends up vertical purple wands that bloom top-down in midsummer heat, pulling in monarchs and swallowtails from across the yard.This tough native prairie perennial grows from a corm, handles Alabama drought and clay once established, and returns reliably every year. The stiff...

The real French tarragon - keen anise-vanilla flavor with a faint numbing bite that makes bearnaise, chicken, and vinegar taste like France.This is French tarragon, the sterile clone propagated only from cuttings and divisions - the seed-grown Russian type sold cheaply elsewhere is coarse...