Georgia Gold Medal Plant Program

Distylium can take drought, heat and wet feet. Deer don’t prefer it, but may munch. After hearing those facts, this plant’s glossy evergreen foliage in varieties with upright to spreading forms that range from three to ten feet tall, is almost icing on the cake!
Distylium is considered a tougher, disease-resistant alternative to cherry laurels, junipers, hollies, Indian hawthorn, and boxwood.

Drift® roses are a cross of groundcover roses and miniature roses, offering the best of both: disease resistance, repeat blooming, compact size. Works well in the landscape, as container plants, or on a slope. Many feel that Peach Drift Rose has proven to be the showiest, most compact, and toughest of this series for Georgia.

This native of China is related to boxwood, but has a looser, more relaxed form. It is used as low hedging and can be shaped a bit, but its pliable branches form a beautiful, arching shape. Sweet Box’s small, deep green leaves are a perfect background for colorful coral bells and vivid spring bulbs – or plant a few in front of Annabelle hydrangeas to help support floppy stems.

Sweet Box is also an excellent, deer-resistant choice for a shady bank or woodland landscape. Sweet Box can handle dark shade under eaves or trees.

Evergreen leaves and sweetly fragrant blooms help to make this Asian native one of the quintessential landscape plants of the American South. No Southern garden should be without a gardenia. Compact new hybrids help make gardenias easier to incorporate into urban landscapes at the front of shrub borders.

Gardenia jasminoides ‘Radicans’ matures at 2′-3′ tall by three feet wide and has been available for several years. ‘Double Mint’ (3′) Heaven Scent® (4′) and ‘Frost Proof’ (5′) are examples of smaller gardenias that work as low shrubs, create evergreen groundcovers or add to a container planting.

With the exception of the azalea, there may not be a more historical “southern” garden plant than the Camellia. Sasanqua Camellia, boasts a less formal (but still dense) rounded habit when compared to a Japanese Camellia, but flowers one month earlier (September) and is less likely to suffer the effects of early GA freezes.

Flower color varies from white to pink to red (including mottled flowers) and includes single and double flowers. Camellia petal blight can also negatively affect sasanqua camellia, although the sasanqua camellia is more tolerant of this disease than Japanese camellia. If petal blight becomes a problem in your garden, removal of spent blooms after petal drop is the most effective means of control.

Light up your landscape with Limelight Panicle Hydrangea. Its large, chartreuse flower clusters set the summer landscape aglow and are sure to be the envy of neighbors and friends.

In July, creamy white flower clusters, up to 8 inches across, emerge on strong, upright stems. As flower clusters mature, their color changes from creamy white to chartreuse in summer, rosy pink in fall, and beige in winter. They can be harvested fresh or dried and used in floral arrangements. If left on the plant, they will persist all winter on the tips of naked stems.

For a heavenly scent in the landscape, plant Fragrant Tea Olive. Its sweet perfume is a pleasant surprise in September and October, a time when other plants are tapering off in their growth and preparing for their winter rest. One whiff of its intoxicating fragrance and you’ll fall in love with this award-winning plant.

Creamy white flowers are often hidden among the foliage and are not usually noticeable until their fragrance infiltrates the landscape. There are several cultivars of Fragrant Tea Olive in the trade, such as ‘Apricot Gold’, which produces apricot-gold flowers and ‘Butter Yellow’, which produces creamy yellow flowers.

Paperbush is a plant for all seasons. Enjoy its showy, fragrant flowers and attractive bark from December to February. Paperbush is a deciduous shrub, with coarse-textured summer foliage is somewhat tropical in appearance. They are bluish-green on top and silver-green below. As fall approaches, the older foliage gradually turns yellow and drops, and then the remaining foliage sheds after the first real hard freeze.|The young flower buds are silvery in appearance, turning white as they expand, then creamy yellow when open. Smooth, chocolate-brown bark creates a striking contrast to the flowers and helps show them off.

It seldom snows in Georgia, but it’s possible to have snowballs in April and May if you plant Chinese Snowball Viburnum. The showy white flower clusters, up to 8 inches across, look just like snowballs, only without the ice crystals. Chinese Snowball Viburnum is a large, deciduous shrub. It looks best when used as a background plant in the perennial border or woodland garden, where it disappears into the winter landscape, then pops to the foreground in spring to become a focal point of the landscape.

The flowers emerge green, and then gradually fade to pure white. Eventually they become light brown, persisting on the plant for several weeks. Sometimes a second flush of bloom occurs in late summer. The flowers are commonly cut and used, both fresh and dried, in floral arrangements.