My friend, the ace flower arranger, made a flamboyant holiday arrangement the other day featuring a fountain-like array of crystal vessels festooned with an extravagant amount of red-berried nandina.\u00a0 The whole thing turned out to be a bit over-the-top for her home d\u00e9cor, so she offered me the nandina.\u00a0 I jumped at the chance, since nandina, known as Nandina domestica to its horticulturist friends and \u201cheavenly bamboo\u201d or \u201csacred bamboo\u201d to other admirers, is one of those plants you see in all the holiday decorating magazines.\u00a0 It is especially well-loved in the South, where it succeeds in landscapes to the point of invasiveness.\u00a0 Along with the large, glossy leaves of southern magnolia\u2014Magnolia grandiflora\u2014 a spray of nandina berries can turn a subdued suburban mantelpiece into something artistic and opulent.<\/p>\n
Called \u201cnanten\u201d in Japanese, nandina is an evergreen shrub native not only to Japan, but parts of China and India.\u00a0 \u201cNandina\u201d is most likely a corruption of \u201cnanten\u201d and \u201cdomestica\u201d means \u201cdomesticated\u201d.\u00a0 In its some of its home areas, nandina has been domesticated since at least the thirteenth century.\u00a0 The species\u2019 exceptional vigor, not to mention those brilliant red berries, also mark it as a member of the barberry or Berberidaceae plant family.\u00a0 Unlike their barberry relatives, the shrubs have no prickles and feature smallish, fine leaves and cane-like stems that have long reminded admirers of bamboo.<\/p>\n
Because nandina so often stars in publications like Southern Living<\/em>, I had always assumed that it would not survive in my USDA Zone 7 garden.\u00a0 I was wrong.\u00a0 Just as southern magnolia sometimes flourishes here, nandina can brave at least some northern winters.\u00a0 It is hardy from USDA zones 9 through 6, which means at least theoretically, that it can withstand winters in climates where the average annual minimum temperatures sink to zero degrees Fahrenheit.\u00a0\u00a0 In the colder parts of its range, it is mostly likely deciduous rather than evergreen,<\/p>\n which may discourage gardeners who grow fancy-leaf varieties for the foliage rather than the berries.<\/p>\n Species nandinas\u2014as opposed to some of the named varieties\u2014can grow up to about eight or nine feet tall, with slender, upright stems, adorned with numerous leaflets.\u00a0 In spring, those same branches are home to sprays of small white flowers with prominent yellow anthers.\u00a0 If not snipped away by over-zealous pruners, the flowers eventually give way to dense, pyramid-shaped clusters of small, red berries.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t clip them for use as holiday decorations, they are also very popular with birds and small wildlife.<\/p>\n Species nandina fruits best if it is grown in the company of other nandinas, a quality that enhances the shrubs\u2019 appeal as subjects for hedging and other mass plantings.\u00a0 According to Roger Phillips and Martin Rix, in their indispensible book, The Botanical Garden<\/em>, the Japanese have traditionally planted nandina beside doorways or under eaves to bring good luck to their houses.\u00a0 In fact, historically, the Japanese have been so enamored of nandina that by the end of the nineteenth century, over one hundred varieties were cultivated in that country.<\/p>\n Of those 100 varieties, many were grown for interesting foliage, including exceptionally narrow or twisted leaves, rather than for berries.\u00a0 That tradition continues.\u00a0 Here in the U.S., one of the most popular nandinas is a dwarf called \u2018Fire Power\u2019, which maxes out at a diminutive one to two feet tall and equally wide.\u00a0 The brilliance suggested by its name is due entirely to leaves that start out lime-green in spring, begin developing red tints as the season advances and don brilliant scarlet dress in the fall.<\/p>\n The advantage of \u2018Fire Power\u2019 and other nandinas grown for foliage is that they are less likely to be invasive than their species relations.\u00a0 In some parts of the deep South, Nandina domestica has escaped cultivation and populated natural areas, outcompeting native species and earning the \u201cinvasive\u201d designation.\u00a0 In the colder areas of its range, north of Kentucky and North Carolina, this seems to be less of a problem.<\/p>\n A happy nandina enjoys warm, moist summers and full sun to part shade.\u00a0 Consistent moisture and well-amended soil are a must.\u00a0 If you are growing the fruiting types, avoid pruning until right after you have harvested all the berries that you want.\u00a0 Dwarf nandinas do not need much pruning at all.<\/p>\n My gift nandina berries are now gracing my mantelpiece, making me feel as if I am finally worthy of my Southern Living <\/em>subscription.\u00a0 Now all I need now to enhance that worthiness and make my happiness complete is a handful of southern magnolia leaves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My friend, the ace flower arranger, made a flamboyant holiday arrangement the other day featuring a fountain-like array of crystal vessels festooned with an extravagant amount of red-berried nandina.\u00a0 The whole thing turned out to be a bit over-the-top for her home d\u00e9cor, so she offered me the nandina.\u00a0 I jumped at the chance, since … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[1543,1541,1542,980,1547,1544,742,154,1540,1546,1548,1545,976],"class_list":["post-2018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-bird-gardening","tag-christmas-plants","tag-fruiting-shrubs","tag-habitat-gardening","tag-heavenly-bamboo","tag-holiday-decorating","tag-holiday-plants","tag-invasive-plants","tag-nandina","tag-red-berries","tag-sacred-bamboo","tag-southern-plants","tag-winter-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2019,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018\/revisions\/2019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}