Yikes! I forgot to post last week! So, if you’re reading this, you get a special edition that features four shrubs that put on a fabulous fall show. Plus, they all are native cultivars! Enjoy!
Ginger Wine® Physocarpus has a gorgeous full-season color palette: spring foliage emerges orange, then matures to bright burgundy in the fall. It has superior disease resistance, including resistance to powdery mildew.
For an out-of-this-world flower show, look no further than Gatsby Moon® oakleaf hydrangea. Really, its flowers are so massive and so round that seeing it in bloom truly reminded us of seeing the big, beautiful glowing moon at night. Pillowy mophead-like flowers draw open a creamy white, misted with green, and slowly mature to a lovely shade of green that persists throughout the rest of the summer. Come fall, the foliage lights into glowing burgundy color.
Legend of the Fall® fothergilla sets a new standard for the species with brilliant, glowing hues of orange, yellow, and red. Fragrant white flowers in spring are the ideal way to welcome the season and provide sustenance to pollinators as they wake up or migrate back to your region.
Fire and ice, or in this case snow, are a classic combination, but seeing them perfectly embodied in a plant never gets old. The brand new Low Scape Snowfire™ Aronia exhibits these extremes perfectly. Among its fellows in the Low Scape® series, it is the heaviest bloomer yet! Its spring bloom is fluffy and white and almost obscures the shiny green foliage. By late summer, an equally abundant crop of dark blue berries arrives, now to the delight of birds and other wildlife. It’s in fall, though, when the gardener’s gift is delivered – the foliage ignites in a jaw-dropping color show of glowing red and burgundy. Altogether this plant is an incredible performer; it gives three solid seasons of interest with very little work to maintain it.
And that’s it! I hope you have enjoyed the glory of autumn…because winter is coming. (Play ominous music.) Next week we’re back with another Plant of the Week feature!