Native trees for the Mid-Atlantic: what to plant on the Coastal Plain, the Piedmont and the mountains

What to plant across the Mid-Atlantic depends on which of its three regions the ground lies in, and then on the spot. Bottomland oaks, bald cypress and black gum suit wet ground on the Coastal Plain. Bear oak and beach plum belong on its sand, flowering dogwood and redbud on the Piedmont, and sweet birch and mountain laurel in the mountains. Plant any of them while they are dormant, in fall or early spring. This guide covers the seven jurisdictions of our Mid-Atlantic shipping zone: Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, the District of Columbia and West Virginia.

Coastal Plain, Piedmont and mountains

Geologists count more than three physiographic provinces in the region, six in Maryland alone if the continental shelf is included. For choosing native plants, Virginia’s five are grouped into three regions: Coastal Plain, Piedmont and Mountain. This guide does the same.

“Each province is unique in topography, soil pH, soil depth, elevation, availability of light, and hydrology.” (Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, Virginia’s Physiographic Provinces)

The Coastal Plain is loose sediment, a wedge of gravel, sand, silt and clay that thickens to more than 8,000 feet at the Maryland coast. Its inner edge is the Fall Line, where hard bedrock gives way to the softer sediments, marked in northern Virginia by falls and rapids.

Inland, the Piedmont is a gently rolling upland on hard, crystalline rock such as schist and gneiss. Beyond it the Mountain region spans the Blue Ridge, the long parallel ridges of the Ridge and Valley, and the stream-cut Appalachian Plateaus, mostly on folded and faulted sedimentary rock. In Maryland the Great Valley, there called the Hagerstown Valley, lies on limestone and dolomite, as the Frederick Valley in the Piedmont does.

Those limestones have long supplied agricultural lime. Soil pH narrows the choice: mountain laurel fails on lime and sourwood insists on acid soil. By contrast, blue ash, wild in the region only in West Virginia, is a tree of dry limestone slopes. Frederick County, Maryland, reaches from the Piedmont into the Blue Ridge, one reason the range maps are wrong about what a particular lot will grow.

Zones, heat and when to plant

The 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map rests on one number, the average of each winter’s lowest temperature from 1991 to 2020, in 10-degree Fahrenheit zones split into 5-degree halves. On its state maps the region runs from 5b to 8b.

The coldest ground, 5b, is on West Virginia’s highest ridges, Pennsylvania’s northern tier and Highland County in Virginia, and the warmest, 8b, is at Virginia Beach.

“many other environmental factors, in addition to hardiness zones, contribute to the success or failure of plants. […] Warm season heat and moisture balance are particularly important in this regard.” (USDA Agricultural Research Service, How to Use the Maps)

American mountain ash shows the difference: hardy to zone 2, it is rated only to zone 7 and struggles in hot lowland gardens. The site check takes a species, the zone, the sun and how wet the soil stays, and says whether the tree will thrive there, struggle or fail; it cannot see soil pH.

Plant in a dormant season. Our guide to the ten planting mistakes puts fall first, because a tree planted after leaf drop has the whole dormant season to grow roots before it has leaves to supply. Maryland’s Backyard Buffers Program calls early spring, before leaf-out, typically the best period for its bare-root seedlings. Blue Whale Trees ships live plants only from February to May and from October to November, while they are dormant, and ships acorns, nuts and seed year-round. Open the box the day it arrives; planting bare-root trees on arrival covers the first weeks, and planting acorns, nuts and seed covers the seed.

Wet ground and stream banks

The wettest ground lies in bottoms and flats, and it takes the flood-tolerant trees described in how floodplain trees survive high water:

• Bald cypress grows wild north to southern Delaware and takes standing water or an ordinary lawn.
• Overcup oak, wild from Delaware and Maryland south on floodplain clay, stands in floodwater for months and then takes a dry summer.
• Swamp chestnut oak, wild on the coastal plains from New Jersey south, bears some of the largest and sweetest acorns of any eastern oak.
• Cherrybark oak, the tallest and fastest southern red oak, grows wild from southeastern Virginia south and wants moist, fertile ground. It and the swamp chestnut oak are specimen lines grown from single selected parent trees.
• Black gum grows in wet bottoms and on dry, rocky slopes alike.

Around them go the shrubs and small trees of wet ground:

• Sweetbay magnolia, on acid ground that floods in winter.
• Smooth alder, whose roots fix nitrogen and knit wet banks together.
• Silky dogwood, for sunny ditches.
• Winterberry, for swamp and pond edges.
• Spicebush, for shaded stream banks.

Bald cypress, sweetbay, silky dogwood, winterberry and smooth alder go out with swamp doghobble as the Wet Spot Pack.

On a stream bank, trees and shrubs trap sediment, take up nutrient pollution, hold the bank and shade the water. Buffers are in place along an estimated 55 percent of the Chesapeake Bay watershed’s 288,000 miles of stream banks and shorelines. That falls short of the 70 percent that scientists have found a stream needs to be protected. The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program pays farmers to plant buffers. Maryland’s Backyard Buffers Program gives landowners with a stream, ditch or pond who do not qualify for farm cost-share a free bag of 20 to 30 bare-root native seedlings, with reservations generally taken in March.

Piedmont uplands and yards

Flowering dogwood wants dappled shade, mulch over its roots and no wet feet, and a seedling commonly flowers at six years. Eastern redbud, wild from New Jersey and southern Pennsylvania south, takes average to dry soil and flowers from the bare bark, though it lives only a few decades. White fringetree grows 12 to 20 feet tall in a yard and takes wet soil but not prolonged drought. Sourwood, wild from southwestern Pennsylvania south, wants a bed of acid, well-drained soil rather than a lawn strip.

For shade or dry ground:

• American hornbeam takes flooding and deep shade in stream bottoms.
• Hop hornbeam takes drought and rocky soil on dry slopes.
• Blackhaw suits a dry woodland edge.
• Sassafras, a pioneer of old fields, spreads by root suckers into a grove, and it resents being moved, so it goes in young.

Black gum is the pick for a lawn with room for one shade tree, chosen for scarlet fall color over speed.

All but blackhaw are among our yard trees, and small native trees for small yards covers a lot too small for a shade tree. To choose a species for a given yard, the tree finder filters by zone, mature size, sun, soil moisture and what the plant should do.

Dry sand, ridgetops and mountain coves

Dry sand on the Coastal Plain and thin rock on the ridgetops share the scrub oaks. Bear oak is the scrub oak of pine barrens and ridgetops. It grows wild from New York and New Jersey through Pennsylvania and Maryland and down the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia. It resprouts after fire and stops flowering in shade. Dwarf chinquapin oak takes dry sandy or rocky ground and bears sweet acorns at three to five years. A compact post oak of deep coastal-plain sand from southeastern Virginia south, sand post oak is built for heat and drought but untested north of zone 6. All three are among our rare oaks.

Three shrubs of the sand:

• Beach plum grows in pure sand on the coast from Maine to Maryland, takes salt and drought, and needs a second, unrelated seedling to set fruit.
• Northern bayberry grows on dunes and sand flats, fixes nitrogen and stands up to a salted road.
• Staghorn sumac colonizes dry banks and road cuts.

The Dry Sandy Site Pack combines bear oak, dwarf chinquapin oak, beach plum and staghorn sumac with two more plants. One is black huckleberry, which fruits every July on the poorest dry acid soil. The other is leadplant, a deep-rooted prairie shrub that takes the same dry sand. Leadplant grows wild only from Indiana west, so it is not a Mid-Atlantic native.

In the mountains the zones fall to 6a and 5b on the highest ground, and these take that ground:

• Sweet birch, the dark-barked birch of the Appalachians, does best on moist, protected north and east slopes.
• Cucumber magnolia, the hardiest native magnolia, grows fast on cool, moist mountain sites and reaches 100 feet on the deep soil of a mountain cove.
• Rosebay rhododendron forms the evergreen thickets of Appalachian stream valleys and wants shade and moist soil.
• Mountain laurel grows on acid, rocky, well-drained soil in the Piedmont and on the Coastal Plain as well as in the mountains.
• Witch hazel flowers from October into December in moist woods and bottoms.

Pests, disease and deer

Spotted lanternfly

Spotted lanternfly, first found in North America in southeastern Pennsylvania in 2014, has been recorded feeding on more than seventy plant species. Heavy feeding has contributed to the death of grapevines, the invasive tree-of-heaven and black walnut saplings. Lanternfly feeding is not known to directly kill other plants, and tree-of-heaven should be removed where practical. Of our trees, black walnut is the one whose saplings have died under heavy feeding.

Emerald ash borer

Emerald ash borer has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees since it reached Detroit from Asia in the mid-1990s, and it is established in 37 states. In a Michigan common garden opened to the beetle in 2012, every black ash was dead by 2013. By August 2022, 63 percent of the green ash and 12 percent of the white ash had died. All 26 remaining blue ash were alive and appeared healthy. Blue ash is the North American ash to plant now, on the limestone ground it prefers.

White fringetree, in the olive family with the ashes, is the complication. The borer was first found infesting it in Ohio in 2014, and of 166 planted fringetrees in four states, 26 percent were infested in 2015 and 13 percent in 2018. Most survived, but several were removed, and infestation is expected to rise where fringetrees grow densely, so we would plant it as one tree among many rather than in a row.

Beech leaf disease

Beech leaf disease, caused by a nematode that lives in the leaves, was first found in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2012 and had reached Virginia by December 2024. The answer to a declining stand is to plant its successors now.

“The most important method to mitigate the loss of beech in forests, rural, and suburban environments (not street trees) is to proactively underplant (and deer fence) with native cohort trees as the beech are declining.” (Rutgers Cooperative Extension, Beech Leaf Disease & Management Options)

In New Jersey the native cohort trees include five trees we grow:

• Shagbark hickory
• Pignut hickory
• Mockernut hickory
• American holly
• Black gum

Underplanting calls for 10 to 30 trees per lost beech, 4 to 8 feet apart, behind 6-foot wire mesh.

Deer

Landscape plants in northern New Jersey are rated by deer damage. No plant is deer proof, and the occasionally and frequently damaged ones should be protected with fencing or repellents. The ratings for species we grow:

Cage or tube every young tree whatever its rating; protecting trees from animals has the hardware.

Where to start

Three steps, whatever the county:

• Find the region the ground lies in, Coastal Plain, Piedmont or mountains, and pick from the species listed for it above.
• Test the spot with the site check, which takes the zone, the sun and how wet the soil stays, or let the tree finder narrow the catalog when no species is in mind yet.
• Plant while the tree is dormant, from February to May or October to November, and cage it the day it goes in.

Common questions

What native trees grow best in the Mid-Atlantic?

The ones matched to the ground: bald cypress and bottomland oaks on wet Coastal Plain soil, and bear oak and beach plum on sand. Dogwood and redbud belong on the Piedmont, and sweet birch and mountain laurel in the mountains.

What hardiness zone is the Mid-Atlantic?

On the 2023 USDA map it runs from zone 5b on the coldest high ground to zone 8b at Virginia Beach. Find yours with the ZIP code lookup.

When is the best time to plant trees in the Mid-Atlantic?

In a dormant season, fall after leaf drop or early spring before bud break, which is when live plants ship: February to May and October to November.

Sources

• Native Plants for Conservation, Restoration and Landscaping: Virginia’s Physiographic Provinces: Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation: the five provinces grouped into Coastal Plain, Piedmont and Mountain regions for planting, how provinces differ in soil pH, depth and hydrology, and the Fall Line.
• A Brief Description of the Geology of Maryland: Maryland Geological Survey: six physiographic provinces, the Coastal Plain’s wedge of loose sediment, the Piedmont’s crystalline rock, the mountains’ sedimentary rock, and the limestone and dolomite of the Great and Frederick valleys.
• How to Use the Maps: USDA Agricultural Research Service, 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map: what a zone measures, the 1991 to 2020 data, and the heat, moisture and soil a zone leaves out; the state maps on the same site give the zones by jurisdiction.
• Stream Buffers: Chesapeake Bay Program: what stream buffers do, the 55 percent of stream banks buffered against the 70 percent a stream needs, and the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program.
• Backyard Buffers Program: Maryland Department of Natural Resources Forest Service: free bags of 20 to 30 bare-root native seedlings for streamside landowners, and early spring as the planting period.
• Spotted Lanternfly Management Guide: Penn State Extension: the 2014 detection, a host range of more than seventy species, the plants heavy feeding has killed, and removing tree-of-heaven.
• Long-term survival and radial growth of four North American and two Asian ash species in a common garden exposed to emerald ash borer invasion: Mathieu and McCullough, Environmental Entomology 54 (2025): the borer’s spread and toll, ash deaths by species in a Michigan common garden, and blue ash’s survival.
• The Fate of Ornamental White Fringetree Through the Invasion Wave of Emerald Ash Borer and Implications for Novel Host Use by This Beetle: Ellison, Peterson and Cipollini, Environmental Entomology 49 (2020): infestation of 166 planted white fringetrees in 2015 and 2018, and how the trees fared.
• Beech Leaf Disease & Management Options: Rutgers Cooperative Extension: the leaf nematode behind the disease, its spread to Virginia by December 2024, and the native trees to underplant as beech declines.
• Landscape Plants Rated by Deer Resistance: Rutgers Cooperative Extension: the four damage classes, the advice to protect the more damaged plants, and the ratings for the species in the table.