Notable Natives: American Wintergreen

One of the plants that’s easiest to find in the garden center in the winter is Gautheria procumbens, aka eastern teaberry, checkerberry, or American wintergreen. It’s available around Christmas because it’s sold as a holiday plant that many use in window boxes or porch pots. The red berries are bright and the foliage is a colorful mix of green and purple. Yet this is a plant that should have our interest all year, since it is a lovely evergreen plant for shade.

Wintergreen is a creeping, evergreen ground cover that’s in the heath family. You can see wintergreen growing wild in many woods and conservation lands on Cape Cod. This plant is native to the eastern North America, and the oil from the leaves has been used for traditional medicinals and as flavoring for candies, gum and toothpaste.

You will notice that the wintergreen sold in the garden center has berries that are far larger than the fruit of plants in the wild. This is because the growers get these holiday plant pumped up with the perfect growing conditions. Once placed in your garden, the berries will be about half the size. But not to worry…the fruit of this plant is important to many species of wildlife, and they don’t care if the berries are large or not.

If you purchase wintergreen at this time of year, either grow it in your pots and boxes for the winter, or plant it directly into the ground. Since our soils aren’t usually frozen until after the New Year on Cape Cod, you can plant these in shade gardens now.

Wintergreen flowers offer spring nectar for the bees that pollinate them. If you want to plant as a groundcover, space the plants you buy about twelve inches apart. In shade gardens they also look good planted in groups of 5 or seven, spaced ten inches apart, in front of or between ferns, hosta, or shrubs.