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By Hilda, on April 22nd, 2011
It’s easy to run into problems when you’re trying to identify a plant using a common name, rather than its Latin designation. Here’s one such dilemma: just about any shrub at all with big, round, fluffy, white flowers can ostensibly be called a “snowball bush.”
At one time, I had a snowball bush of my own. Like many snowball bushes, it belonged to the viburnum genus – and its proper name (Viburnum plicatum var. tomentosum ‘Kern’s Pink’) was quite a mouthful. Even its common name — pink snowball viburnum — was problematic though, because the round blossoms opened to snowy white, not the suggested pink hue. (Though the unopened buds may have had a faint rosy blush to them.) The shrub had actually been given to me by a nursery manager who was desperately trying to eliminate ‘Kern’s Pink’ from his stock, because he was tired of customers trying to return the bushes when they failed to produce pink flowers.
Recently I was taking pictures of this absolutely gigantic snowball bush in my neighborhood, when the shrub’s owner came out of the house to chat. The photo is below — it’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?
While I had assumed that this 20-foot tower of snowy blossoms was also a viburnum, she informed me it was a pee-gee hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata), planted by her dad more than 30 years ago. And while I listened politely, this didn’t seem right to me – it was far too early in the year for hydrangeas to be blooming, for one thing.
So I did a little investigating on the Internet and talked to a friend who’s an expert at plant identification. The pee-gee hydrangea, wouldn’t you know it, is also sometimes called a snowball bush – it’s very similar to the large, blue mophead hydrangeas that you see everywhere in June, but with creamy white blooms.
The towering snowball bush in my neighborhood, however, was almost certainly Viburnum macrocephalum, the Chinese snowball bush. It’s the only one of the white-flowered wonders with the ubiquitous “snowball” moniker that is likely to reach a height of 20 feet. The flowers themselves are also huge, starting out lime-green before they turn to white. Unlike many other types of viburnums, they have no scent at all – and they’re sterile, so you won’t get the brilliant red berries that viburnums are known for either. It hardy matters, though, when the spring display is this spectacular. 
By Hilda, on April 5th, 2011
 Photo: Wikimedia Commons “I was sorry because I had no loropetalum, and then I met a man who had no snowdrop.”
With tongue in cheek, the famed garden columnist Henry Mitchell wrote these words three decades ago, and I had to smile when I read them recently in an anthology of his work. The only loropetalum that gardeners knew way back then was the original species – Loropetalum chinense, sometimes known as the Chinese fringe flower, a rather nondescript evergreen shrub that wasn’t especially popular.
But things things have changed since then!
If the great man were alive today, I bet he’d trade his snowdrops in a heartbeat to get his hands on one of the modern loropetalum cultivars pictured here. The hybridizers and nurserymen have really done their magic. Today, bright flowers, burgundy foliage, and a graceful, arching habit combine to give loropetalum year-round appeal.
It was back in the early 1990s when these pink-flowered selections made their debut, and I can still remember when they first hit the garden centers. They’re usually classified as Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum, and they are currently seen absolutely everywhere where winters are relatively mild (they are hardy as far north as zone 6).
 Photo: Terry DelValle, University of Florida extension service
In early spring, usually March, loropetalum will be in its full glory. The hot pink flowers are like little tassels, made up of delicate, fringe-like petals. The show starts slowly, as just a few blossoms open at a time, but by the time the shrub reaches its peak, it can rival an azalea in full bloom. Altogether you can expect three weeks of flowers from loropetalum. At one time, I happened to underplant one of mine with a creeping veronica (Veronica peduncularis ‘Georgia Blue’) and it was a happy accident to find that the two bloom at exactly the same time. The brilliant, cobalt blue veronica combined with the fuchsia tassels of the loropetalum is probably the most spectacular plant combination I’ve ever seen – and it was especially gorgeous where loropetalum’s branches would arch down low toward the ground, so the colors could really mingle. I wish I had a picture of it, but I don’t.
More than any other flowering shrub I can think of, loropetalum has year-round appeal. After they bloom, most of these new cultivars put out reddish-colored new growth that can actually look like flowers from a distance. This new foliage eventually matures to a dark olive or purplish green that makes a nice backdrop for your summer perennials. When cool weather arrives in fall, the foliage deepens again, to a deep burgundy shade – and because it’s evergreen, it makes a nice focal point in the winter garden. During warm spells in December and January, the shrubs will even surprise you by throwing out a few colorful, sporadic blossoms – just a little taste of what’s to come again in the spring.
All things considered, you just can’t go wrong with loropetalum. It fits in everywhere and no matter what the season, as my next-door neighbor puts it, “it just always looks good.”
By Hilda, on March 16th, 2011
I was taking a walk around the neighborhood recently when I caught the sweetest scent imaginable. I knew immediately what it was — a wonderful, early blooming shrub known as winter daphne (Daphne odora) — and began looking around to see which yard it was blooming in. There was actually a large cluster of perhaps five shrubs growing close together, which explained why the scent was so strong. Later, I went back with my camera to get these photos.
 If you look closely, you can barely make out that there are two slightly different varieties of daphne growing here. See how the shrub in the left forefront has variegated leaves? That’s a cultivar known as ‘Aureo-marginata’ and the cream-colored leaf margins bring a little bit of light to shady places. (The shrub directly to the right of it has plain green leaves.)
 The buds are a bright rosy red, while the waxy flowers open to a pale blush pink.
 Daphne likes a semi-shady spot and slightly acid soil. It has a reputation as a finicky grower, and the shrubs will sometimes last just a few years after planting. This is a Southern favorite, growing only in zones 7 to 9.
 I found these shrubs growing in a large front yard, down by the street — but I recommend planting them near your front door, or at least where you’ll pass them on the way to mailbox. You’ll want to enjoy the sweet smell for the short time it lasts!
By Hilda, on February 11th, 2011
The yellow blooms of winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) make an early appearance — usually January or February here in Atlanta where I live. Those who aren’t familiar with it often mistakenly believe it to be a confused forsythia bush, blooming out of sync with the natural order of things.
I actually much prefer this shrub to forsythia, which is so ubiquitous around here that those brassy blooms start to seem tawdry after a while. By the time the forsythia blooms in late March, there’s already so much yellow in the world that it’s easy to take it all for granted. Not so with winter jasmine, which offers up its little six-petaled stars to a mostly colorless landscape.
Arching stems give winter jasmine graceful, weeping habit — here, the shrub just seems to flow off a small embankment. Although in the jasmine family, this shrub bears flowers without scent, and it’s quite a bit less hardy than forsythia, hailing only as far north as Zone 6.
Photos courtesy of David Williams
By Hilda, on November 1st, 2010
American beautyberry is an odd sort of shrub. By this I mean it’s hard to categorize. During the spring and summer it’s not really much to look at, just a generic looking bush that’s probably best placed in an informal setting. Not the kind of shrub you lust after…
Yet when it comes to calling attention to itself in the fall, this shrub is shameless! By late summer it’s already heavily adorned with clusters of berries so purple, they’re downright shocking. And by this time of year, when the shrub has lost its foliage, the fruits are absolutely brazen on the leafless branches.
 I was visiting a friend in a suburb of Nashville last weekend and we were on our way home from brunch when I noticed the color purple on a median strip in the center of the road — lots of lots and purple, for at least a quarter of a mile or so. Even at 45 miles per hour, I figured it had to beautyberry (Callicarpa americana). And I knew I had to stop for pictures, even though traffic was a bit on the heavy side.
The scene really was amazing, with the sunshine, bright blue sky, autumn foliage, and the myriad of bright purple berries. None of my pictures did justice to the plants at all, perhaps because I was trying to keep the cars and traffic lights out of my shot. But whoever planned this planting really did a good job of clustering the shrubs to make a strong impact.
Planting tip:
Plant beautyberry in full sun or light shade and prune hard in late winter for best berry display. (Zones 6 to 10.)
By Hilda, on October 7th, 2010
It’s been gloriously warm for October here in Atlanta, and I’m sitting just inches from my open office window as I type these words. On the other side of the screen, my tea olive is blooming, filling the air with one of the sweetest scents I’ve ever experienced.
The creamy flowers are the main reason I grow this shrub, which is also known as sweet olive, or Osmanthus fragrans for those who prefer Latin binomials. These tiny blossoms are intoxicating not for their beauty – in fact, you hardly notice them hidden among the foliage – but for their scent. The perfume absolutely infiltrates the air in fall, and sporadically throughout the winter whenever there’s a warm spell.
The scent of tea olive is hard to describe – nothing else smells like this, that I can think of. It’s fresh and light, not sweet like roses or headily pungent like jasmine. Not musky. Not fruity. A little bit spicy, but not sharply so. It’s just a clean, happy smell. And I’ve come to think of it as a Southern smell as well, because the scents of autumn didn’t include anything like this when I lived on the Great Lakes. (It was all crisp, timbered smells up there – dry leaves, spruce needles, and wood smoke.)
Tea olive is a bulky, evergreen shrub that can reach 25 feet in height and half that much in girth, so in general you have to choose a site for it carefully.
Mine is growing in a pot, and it probably gets less light than it would like, so it’s a bit more restrained in size. I’ve pruned it into a tree shape, which is easy enough to do, even if you’re growing tea olive in the ground. As you can see, I keep it very close to my front door, and it makes all my comings and goings just a little bit sweeter. It would be a shame to plant tea olive in a place where you didn’t pass by often.
Tea olive and its cousins are widely grown and much loved in  China, where the flowers are harvested and used in tea (similar to jasmine), as well as in perfume. Since they’re so tiny, it takes many kilos to produce a small amount of fragrance, making osmanthus oil an expensive and precious ingredient in the perfumes that contain it. Several years ago in China, a series of postage stamps depicted four different Osmanthus species, including some yellow- and orange-flowered varieties.
Here in the U.S., tea olive is hardy in zones 7 to 9. It seems to be very common in the coastal South, especially in the gardens of like Savannah and Charleston, which is where I first discovered it, but I’d love to hear from gardeners in other parts of the country who grow tea olive or any of the other Osmanthus shrubs.
By Hilda, on September 28th, 2010
Cooler fall temperatures are finally here, and I’ve been finding it’s perfect weather for evening walks. At this time of year, when gardens are winding down in general, it’s always a nice surprise to come across flowers during a stroll — especially when they’re not chrysanthemums!
Here in the South, many spring blooming shrubs will throw out a few bonus blooms in the early fall. As I was walking last night, I spotted several gardenia bushes in the neighborhood that were sporting a few random blooms, so I snapped this photo just as twilight was settling in.
I can get to taking gardenias for granted in June, when they bloom so prolifically that the scent just hangs in air in my neighborhood. (Often, when I’m walking in the spring, I’ll actually smell a gardenia bush before I see it.) But in late September, it seems like a treat to come upon the waxy white flowers, and I make sure I stop to smell every one I see.
There’s no guaranteed trick for getting gardenias to rebloom; it seems to be random luck if you end up with one that throws out autumn flowers. Certain cultivars, including ‘August Beauty,’ have been hybridized for the reblooming habit, and it’s easy enough to seek one out if you’d like to enjoy a handful of scented blossoms in late summer and fall. In my experience, none of them bloom heavily enough to either put on a real show or throw out a lot of scent in the garden — but if you just need one or two gardenia flowers in a bud vase to make you happy, then these fall rebloomers will do the trick!
Planting tip: Rooting gardenia cuttings
Gardenia cuttings root relatively easily in a glass of water. So if you see a fall-blooming gardenia bush in a neighbor’s yard, you might ask for permission to take a cutting or two.
Cut about six or eight inches from the top of a flowering stem. (By choosing a stem that already holds a flower, you’re more likely to select for the reblooming trait.)
Remove the flower from the tip of the stem, and remove the leaves from the bottom half. Place the stem in a jar of water, and keep it in a bright spot, changing the water as necessary to keep it clear and clean.
After a few weeks, you’ll see small white roots beginning to grow. Let these develop for a few more weeks, always making sure the water is clean. When the cutting has a good root system, transplant to a small pot filled with potting soil and allow it to get established before transplanting to the garden.
By Hilda, on June 3rd, 2010
An article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, of all places, touched on the topic of color in the garden. Interestingly enough, it was built around the premise that:
Blue is the most elusive, most coveted color in gardening, where some of the most skilled practitioners take pleasure in attempting to grow the near-impossible. Much of what passes for blue in the plant world—lavender, lilac, larkspur—is actually a shade of purple.
The author, Anne Marie Chaker, covered quite a bit of ground in her well researched story, even touching on the science and genetics of blue pigments in plants (though she rather lightly skipped past most of the fascinating folklore surrounding the rare Himalayan blue poppy, Meconopsis grandis).
Here in Atlanta, where I live, there seems to be an abundance of blue right now — everywhere you look, yards are filled with blue mophead hydrangeas. Our acidic clay soil keeps the flowers a really true shade of blue — quite pretty, for the most part. When I lived in the Midwest, where the soil was more neutral, hydrangeas were always unappealing, muddy shades of mauve and lavender. (For an explanation of how soil pH affects hydrangea flower color, click here.)
 My final thought: I was surprised to see no mention of the Heavenly Blue morning glory in an article about blue flowers. This is an annual that’s easily grown from seed, and is one of the truest shades of blue around, with hardly a hint of lavender. (Like all morning glories, the flowers of Heavenly Blue open just after dawn and close by early afternoon — one more example of how elusive the color blue can be in the garden!
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About
The Author
Hilda Brucker
 Hilda combines her
love of gardening
and passion for writing
in her blog entries.
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