Growing Zone 8

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....

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...

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,...

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...

Loropetalum holds burgundy-purple foliage every day of the year and covers itself in hot pink fringe flowers each spring.Chinese fringe flower is an evergreen shrub grown as much for its deep plum or burgundy leaves as for the shaggy pink blooms that cover it...

Gardenias produce creamy white blooms whose fragrance carries across an entire porch, set against thick, glossy evergreen leaves year-round.Gardenia is the signature fragrant shrub of the Deep South, flowering heavily in late spring with scattered rebloom through summer on many varieties. It wants acidic...

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...

Confederate jasmine turns a fence into a wall of glossy evergreen leaves, then perfumes the whole yard with white pinwheel flowers in May.Also sold as star jasmine, this evergreen twining vine carries thick, dark leaves year-round and erupts in intensely fragrant white flowers in...

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...

Carolina jessamine covers a fence or mailbox in fragrant yellow trumpets in late winter, then stays glossy and evergreen all year.Alabama's own native twining vine, Carolina jessamine blankets itself in bright yellow, sweetly scented flowers from February into April while holding narrow evergreen leaves...

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...

Encore azaleas bloom in spring, then again in summer and fall, giving you three flowering seasons from one evergreen shrub.Encore azaleas are reblooming evergreen azaleas bred for the South, flowering heavily in spring and repeating on new growth through summer and into fall. They...

Abelia flowers nonstop from late spring to frost, feeds pollinators daily, and shrugs off Alabama heat, drought, and poor soil without complaint.Abelia is a tough, semi-evergreen shrub covered in small tubular white or pink flowers for months at a stretch, with foliage that often...

Deep purple triangular leaves fold and unfold with the light each day, floating a haze of pale pink blossoms above them for months.We recommend Oxalis triangularis and Oxalis versicolor for this climate; both handle zone 8a well in containers or as a front-of-border edging,...

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...