Happy Earth Day!
Tomorrow, April 22, is Earth Day, but you don’t need to let it be the only day you do something good for the Earth! Creating a wildlife haven in your garden is a great way to do a little something for the planet. So if you’re looking for a way you can do some good for the Earth this year, try incorporating native and pollinator-friendly plants in your garden. They benefit pollinators and wildlife and look great doing it!
If you need some inspiration, here is a collection of the native shrubs, and here is one of the pollinator-friendly shrubs that we have done a Plant of the Week on. If you don’t find one you like in those collections, check out the Proven Winners® ColorChoice® website for more great native and pollinator-friendly shrubs you can add to your garden. There are many great options out there to fit any garden!
The Plant of the Week this week is both native and pollinator-friendly: Sugartina® ‘Crystalina’ Summersweet.
Fragrant and Fabulous
Sugartina® ‘Crystalina’ Clethra alnifolia has a consistent, dense habit and dark green foliage. It’s a tidy little mound that fits nicely into most landscapes without needing pruning.
While Sugartina® ‘Crystalina’ has lots of fragrant white summer flowers, if you want something even showier, check out Vanilla Spice®. It has huge blooms whose flowers are roughly double the size of typical Clethra flowers.
Sugartina® ‘Crystalina’ Clethra grows 2.5-3′ tall and wide and makes a great mass planting, groundcover, or even a specimen. It is hardy to USDA Zone 4 and will grow in full sun or partial shade.
It’s hardy and tolerates clay soil, wet soil, shade – just about anything you throw at it! That makes it tremendously useful for purpose-driven landscapes like rain gardens or naturalized areas. But the compact varieties hold their own for gardens planted solely for aesthetic reasons. Seriously, who wouldn’t want a mound of showy, fragrant flowers in summer? Your butterfly friends will enjoy it as much as you do.
Enjoy the Weekend!
Weather permitting, this weekend is a great time to get outside! If you need a little push to start your spring gardening, follow along with our “Cleaning out the Garden This Spring” series of YouTube Shorts, where Kristina takes you with her as she cleans out her own garden this spring.