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Gardeners are always asking me for low maintenance plants that they can incorporate into their landscapes. Gardening is, after all, hard work, and it can be frustrating to put a lot of effort into plants that struggle or succumb to one ailment or the other. Having at least a few plants in the landscape that you know will be alright whether or not you are able to give them your full attention can make taking care of the rest of them feel just a little less daunting. There are many plants I could recommend as “low maintenance” depending on the situation, but perhaps the most durable plant I know of, whether grown indoors or out, is Aspidistra elatior, the Cast Iron plant. Now, this perhaps goes without saying, but this plant does not look like cast iron; rather, it got its name because of the fact that it won’t break, bend, rust, rot, wilt, or die under almost any circumstance. It’s just one of the toughest customers in the plant world. It’s definitely not flashy, but it will survive. The Cast Iron plant grows best in shady spots, the type of garden spots where you might grow hosta, ferns, or solomon’s seal. Growing to a height of 2 feet tall and forming clumps as much as 3 feet wide, it can serve either as a substitute for or complement those other shade-loving perennials.
Lower left and lower right: Goldfeather' and ‘Lennon’s Song’ are striped striped cultivar. Photo: C. DeWitt, CC BY 4.0. Upper right: The spots on the 'Milky Way' cultivars stand out against the green background. Leaves emerge directly out of the ground, with 7-12 inch petioles and leaf blades up to 12-18 inches long. They are oval-shaped, and most often solid green. Again, they are not flashy, although there are a few colors with variegated leaf color that are a bit more interesting. These include the cultivars ‘China Stars,’ ‘Milky Way,’ and ‘Well Spotted,’ each of which has dots of white speckled across a green background, and striped cultivars such as the yellow and green ‘Goldfeather’ and ‘Lennon’s Song’ and the green and white ‘Mangetsu’ and ‘Variegata’. The variegated cultivars are a bit more interesting and remind one of the many different variegation patterns of hosta.
While not grown for their flowers, the Cast Iron plant does have some, sort of. They are not typically seen by gardeners, as they occur just at or even below the soil surface, often hidden by dense foliage, mulch, and top soil. The clever horticulturist Tony Avent says they are “best appreciated by moles” due to their location. They bloom sporadically, usually in early summer, and the flowers are actually pretty interesting to behold, as they are a cup-shaped inflorescence with 7-20 petals, ranging from cream-colored to purple. Flowers will occur with a little more frequency in higher light environments, although the foliage may burn a bit in these types of settings, so it's usually best to grow this plant in the shade. Cast Iron plant is commonly used as a houseplant, and also thrives in low-light environments indoors. Matthew Stevens is the County Extension Director and Horticulture Agent for North Carolina Cooperative Extension’s Pitt County Center. If you have questions about this article or gardening in general, please contact the Pitt County Extension Master Gardener Infoline on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 10 am to 12 noon at 252-902-1705.
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While some might think of gardening as an activity for just the warmer months, experienced gardeners and plant lovers recognize that gardens and landscapes have something to offer in all four seasons. Sure, spring and summer is mostly about flowers, with colorful blooms visible on any number of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants anywhere you look. Fall has fewer blooms, but gives us the delightful change in foliage color associated with many of our deciduous trees and shrubs. As the calendar gets set to turn into winter, those colorful leaves have just about all fallen, and many of those trees and shrubs are bare. So where do we look for color and interest in winter landscapes? In many ways, winter is the season for berries, and perhaps no plant showcases the winter berry attribute like the holly. There are, of course, many different species of holly, but so many of them have something to offer during the winter months. First, there is the American holly, Ilex opaca, our native evergreen holly. Ilex opaca is often found growing in mixed forests, and can be used in larger landscapes as a specimen tree, or as a screen, but is not well suited for small landscapes as it grows to a height of 40-60 feet tall. Plants are dioecious, meaning individual trees are either male or female. Only the females produce berries, but a nearby male is needed for pollination. ‘Greenleaf’, at 20-30 feet mature height, and other female cultivars of American holly, are better suited to smaller landscapes.
Left: The ‘Nellie R Stevens’ holly, a cross between the English and Chinese hollies, is a pyramidal-shaped evergreen popular in modern landscapes. Above right: Berries from the 'Savannah holly.' Photo: J. Robbins, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Below right: Holly berries and leaves. Photo: J. Robbins, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 There is also the well-known ‘Nellie R Stevens’ holly, a cross between the English and Chinese hollies, which is monoecious (self-fertile) berry-producing, pyramidal-shaped evergreen popular in modern landscapes. It too can be used either as a specimen or screen. At up to 30 feet tall and 20-25 feet wide, it provides a dense growth nearly as wide as tall. Foster’s holly (Ilex x attenuata ‘Fosteri’) and Savannah holly (Ilex x attenuata ‘Savannah’) grow to a similar height as ‘Nellie R Stevens’, but are both slightly more slender, at 10-15 feet wide. Both Foster and Savannah are heavy berry producers with clusters of pea-sized red fruit from early fall through late winter.
The aforementioned English holly can be a bit difficult to grow in the Southern U.S. However, its classic combination of red berries and sharply toothed dark green foliage is the blueprint for traditional holiday décor, and in fact is often referred to as Christmas holly. The Meserve holly, sometimes referred to as blue holly due to its especially dark shade of foliage, is the most visually similar holly that we grow in Eastern N.C. Many of the blue holly cultivars, such as ‘Blue Prince’/’Blue Princess’ and ‘Blue Boy’/’Blue Girl’ are dioecious male and female pairs and are typically medium sized shrubs used in foundation plantings or hedges. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Winterberry holly, Ilex verticillata, while discussing hollies that bear fruit in winter. Winterberry is especially adapted to wet sites, and unlike the others mentioned, is deciduous. Its bare stems dappled with dark red berries can absolutely dazzle in the right setting. Matthew Stevens is the County Extension Director and Horticulture Agent for North Carolina Cooperative Extension’s Pitt County Center. If you have questions about this article or gardening in general, please contact the Pitt County Extension Master Gardeners at [email protected] or 252-902-1705. While I love gardening in Eastern North Carolina for many reasons, there are a few favorite plants of mine that I wish were better fits for our climate. I have lived in Massachusetts, Maryland, and a few different parts of North Carolina, so naturally I’ve encountered some plants in previous lives that don’t do quite as well here due to climate or soil differences, but I still have fond memories of them. One of those plants is the Sourwood tree, Oxydendrum arboreum. The first time I remember seeing a Sourwood tree, I was perhaps ten years old. My parents had just planted a new tree in the backyard, right in the shallow left field area of the imaginary baseball field my friends and I sometimes played on. I remember being annoyed that this new tree got in our way and I would occasionally mutter under my breath about how inconvenient it was. A few years passed, I became interested in plants and landscaping, and went off to college to study horticulture. Then one summer I came home, looked out the kitchen window to see my parents’ sourwood tree in full bloom and thought, “My God, that’s beautiful.” Sourwood has small, white, bell-shaped blooms arranged in long, drooping panicles in early summer. Flowers are fragrant and resemble both lily of the valley (it is sometimes referred to as lily of the valley tree) and the Japanese andromeda shrub. In fact, Sourwood was previously classified in the genus Andromeda before it was re-named as Oxydendrum. The blooms sit atop the glossy green foliage and create an effect similar to a snow-covered tree in winter. Even as the individual flower petals drop, the finger-like stalk of the panicles remain, extending the visual impact. A bronze fruit capsule develops post-bloom, which adds interest.
Top left: The white, bell-shaped blooms left: The white, bell-shaped blooms of the Sourwood tree are fragrant and resemble both lilies of the valley and the Japanese andromeda shrub. Photo: Mrs. Gemstone, CC BY-SA 4.0 Top right: The flowers are arranged in long, drooping panicles in early summer. Photo: W. Cutler, CC BY 4.0. Bottom left: The striking red fall foliage is among the most attractive of all fall colors. Photo: S. Kaiser, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Bottom right: In summer, the flowers sit atop the glossy green foliage. Photo: J. Robbins, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Sourwood trees are native to a large part of the Central and Eastern United States from Pennsylvania south to Florida and as far west as Ohio and Louisiana. Although they are found throughout North Carolina, they are much more common, and better suited, to the western half of the state. Perhaps you’ve seen sourwood honey for sale and wondered where that honey comes from. The answer is that it likely came from areas in the mountains where beehives were placed in proximity to groves of sourwood trees. While not ideal for our area, they theoretically could be a fit in some butterfly/pollinator gardens or rain gardens, as they attract and provide habitat for many species of butterflies, and are also tolerant to a range of soil moistures.
Matthew Stevens is the County Extension Director and Horticulture Agent for North Carolina Cooperative Extension’s Pitt County Center. If you have questions about this article or gardening in general, please contact the Pitt County Extension Master Gardeners at [email protected] or 252-902-1705. |
Matt Stevens
Pitt County Extension Director & Horticulture Agent Archives
January 2026
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