Growing Zone 8

'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...

Distylium gives you a clean blue-green evergreen with no blight, no bagworms, and no shearing - the low-maintenance answer to holly and juniper.Distylium is a relatively new landscape shrub bred specifically to replace the workhorse evergreens that give Southern gardeners the most trouble. It...

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...

Ghost plant forms pearly gray rosettes that blush pink and gold in strong sun, trailing over pot edges and rooting from any fallen leaf.This is one of the toughest and most forgiving succulents we sell, surviving hard drought, poor soil, and considerable neglect, and...

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...

The cleanest, loudest lemon flavor of any herb - one leaf perfumes a whole pitcher of tea, syrup, or sorbet base.Lemon verbena is a frost-tender South American shrub, so treat it as a container plant in zone 8a and move it into a garage...

Bright lemon-and-thyme perfume that seasons roast chicken, butter, and shortbread without any of the sourness of actual citrus.A low, woody, evergreen sub-shrub that holds its leaves through most Alabama winters and keeps cutting through the cold months. It resents wet feet far more than...

Feathery fronds and crisp anise-sweet stems that lift roasted fish, pork sausage, and citrus salads from spring straight through fall.This is herb fennel, grown for its fronds, pollen, and seed rather than the fat bulb of Florence fennel. It is a strong perennial across...

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...