Summersweet Clethra

 

The Sweet Smell of Summer

 

Oh, how the gardens are alive with butterflies this time of year!  Finally, in the past two weeks, we are seeing so many fluttering around the nursery searching for nectar.  And lucky for us, it’s a living lab.  We get to watch and see which plant the butterflies love the most.  Butterfly plants are the most commonly requested at the nursery.  And I hear so many people say the same thing…I get hoards of butterflies on my Butterfly Bush.  Butterfly Bush is not native, although many people think it is because it has escaped cultivation and become naturalized.  It is not on the invasive list in PA, but it might be soon.

 

Summersweet Clethra 'Ruby Spice'



There is a great native shrub that is the perfect substitute to Butterfly Bush.  It goes by the name Summersweet Clethra, or Clethra alnifolia.  It has a similarly shaped flower, but more cylindrical than pyramidical.  The straight species is white, but one of our favorite cultivars is ‘Ruby Spice’.  The best part is the scent…they don’t call it Summersweet for nothing!  You can smell a large Summersweet shrub before you see it.  And ‘Ruby Spice’ blossoms have such a gorgeous color gradient, rose to light pink to white.  It grows best in moist conditions but it will tolerate drier conditions once established.  It prefers full sun to part shade and in comparison to Butterfly Bush, it is much more rounded and full all the way to the ground and topping out at 5-8’.  It is attractive in fall with its yellow fall foliage.  Once you get a whiff of it in bloom, you’ll wish you were a butterfly so you could drink its sweet nectar!   

Flowering Dogwoods and Redbuds

 

Young Redbud

 

I love this time of year!  The flowering trees and the chartreuse leaf buds make the landscape look so vibrant.  Whose garden can hold a candle to Mother Nature’s design?  Most of us aspire to recreate that jaw dropping mass of color so prevalent in the natural landscape this time of year.  It would take a lot of perennials to match what our small flowering trees provide in terms of color impact.  I admit, I have a soft spot for dogwoods and redbuds.

 

Pink Flowering Dogwood





The purple flowering trees we are seeing in the landscape this time of year are Eastern Redbuds, Cercis canadensis (top photo).  However, there are non native Chinese Redbuds as well.  They get gorgeous purple flowers before the heart shaped leaf emerges, then turn golden yellow for fall.  Redbuds are in the Leguminosae (pea) family.  Plants in the legume family have nitrogen fixing properties so they improve your soil.   But even better, the flowers of the Eastern Redbud are edible (and make a great addition to salads), and the fruit, which resembles a pea pod, can be cooked and eaten when young and tender.  You get flowers, shade, soil improvement, edible pods, and fall color all wrapped into one!  What more could you ask for?  Oh, you want them to be hardy too?  Got it!

 

Flowering Dogwood



The white to pink flowering trees we see this time of year are dogwoods (pictured above).  There are native and non native varieties.  Our native Flowering Dogwood, Cornus florida, provides flowers this time of year before leaves emerge.  The flowers (petals are actually showy bracts), start out pink then turn to white, providing an interesting color gradient that seems to change daily (photo above).  There are many cultivars including varieties that have pink (middle picture) or yellow flowers.  The dogwood berries are loved by the birds and the fall color is burgundy red.  Dogwoods prefer moist, well-drained acid soil and a site that is shaded part of the day, although they can tolerate a wider range of conditions.  They can be susceptible to anthracnose if they aren’t healthy, so Redbud is a better choice if you can’t provide the habitat the dogwood prefers.  But if you have the space and the right conditions, why not grow both?