Northern Bayberry

For a shoreline property or a windy exposed site where nothing seems to last, northern bayberry is the native shrub that holds. Myrica pensylvanica takes salt spray, road salt, pure sand, drought, and wet feet, which is an unusual combination in one plant and the reason you see it planted along coastal roads and dunes. It grows 5 to 6 feet tall and spreads 8 to 10 feet, hardy from Zone 3 through Zone 8 in full sun to part sun, and it settles in and starts spreading within two or three seasons.

The leaves are leathery and semi-evergreen, holding late into winter through much of the range, and they release a clean spicy scent when you brush past or crush one. That fragrance is the same one bayberry candles are named for.

Female plants carry clusters of waxy grey-blue berries along the stems, and the wax coating is what gets rendered for candle making. The berries are also a high-fat winter food that yellow-rumped warblers rely on when little else is left. Fruit sets on female plants with a male nearby, and young plants are not sold sexed, so planting a group of three or more is the practical way to get berries.

Bayberry pulls its own nitrogen from the air, which is how it thrives on sterile sand where other shrubs starve. It spreads by suckers into a colony over time, so it works better as a mass planting, a hedge, or a bank cover than as a single specimen. Deer leave it alone.