I would recommend the Southern Living Garden Book. It includes information on the coastal regions, and guides you to plants that really work. Welcome to NC, Wilmington is great!
-amy

Here's a link. Don't just look at the first book - more showed up at the bottom of the page that also look promising.

Here is a link that might be useful: Carolina coastal gardening book link

I like the Southern Gardener's Book of Lists by Lois Trigg Chaplin.

Anything by Pamela Harper is great, and I believe she gardens pretty close to where you'll be. I would especially recommend Thirty Years in a Four Season Garden. It's gives great in-depth info on wonderful plants that will grow in that area.

I just recently moved from Fayetteville, NC. Wilmington is one of my most favorite places in the whole wide world. I miss Wrigthsville Beach so much. Go to the New Hanover County extension office and they will have a ton of info for you. Azaleas are very popular there. They even have a festival every year. Make sure you go to Bridgetenders and Elijah's for dinner as soon as you get there.

Thank you for all your suggestions. I have ordered a few books on Amazon.com and have been enjoying reading them. They will make the winter here go fast. And next time we are down in Wilmington we will be sure to dine at Bridgetender's and Elijah's.

I would also get the Southeastern Palm Society's book on hardy palms for the Southeast. Do a google search and you can find it. In addition to gardenias, azeleas, camellias and Southern Magnolias, you can grow some kinds of hardy citrus, bananas and palms like the Sabal Palmetto, Windmill Palm, Needle Palm and dwarf palmetto(sabal minor). In my Zone 7a in Virginia I have been growing Loquat trees and even Eucalyptus. Check out my website that might give you some ideas.

Here is a link that might be useful: Panama John's Tropical Zone

"Garden Bulbs for the South" by Scott Ogden

Everything by Elizabeth Lawrence. They're classics. If you really do like to garden, Dirr's books are excellent references and good investments, especially Woody Landscape Plants. For perennials, Armitage's one on them is excellent and includes a lot of very useful info for Southerners (but not his later one on annuals).

Suggest the North Carolina dept of agricultural.
Also the local newspaper should have a gardening column.
I find this is the best information available.

Good Luck God Bless

Month-By-Month Gardening in the South by Don Hastings

Heat Zone Gardening-- was given to me by the head of our city's Landscape Services Dept. I no longer read garden books without checking where the author lives; writers in upstate New York will label a perennial as "heat-tolerant"...because it's a summer-bloomer for them. I gardened in the upper Midwest, when I moved South it was like starting over. Trees, shrubs, roses, even bulbs-- different!