Heather Care

The flowers of heathers (or more properly, heaths) are a wonderful source of winter color and some heaths have unusally colored foliage that can provide even more punch to your planting schemes. They're also extremely useful for landscaping, because of their mounding growth habit and spreading qualities; they're ideal for planting in front of larger shrubs such as rhododendrons and pieris, for instance.

But heathers and heaths are not the kind of plants you can just pop into the ground and forget about. If you want heathers that grow and bloom well, you have to site, water and prune them properly.

The Right Site

Think of open, windswept moors when you think of heathers. Heathers will not do well in shade and they don't like having leaves fall on them. They're native to sites that get full sun and high natural rainfall; they prefer to grow in soils that are acid and have low fertility. Any cultivar of Calluna vulgaris, Erica spiculifolia, or Erica tetralix has to have soil that has a pH level of 4.5 to 6.5. Some heathers are more tolerant; Daboecia x scotia, for instance, is partially lime tolerant, and both Erica carnea and Erica x darlyensis are quite lime tolerant; these will flourish in any soils. For a handy chart of the pH requirements of heather species, go to http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/heather/ch... .

It's important not to overfertilize heathers; they won't survive in fertile soil and don't like too much feeding. Add plenty of bone meal when planting and leave it at that, except for a once-a-year addition of a dry granular fertilizer for acid loving evergreens. The experts at the Rock Spray Nursery also use a seaweed/fish blend fertilizer as a foliar feed during the growing season; for more details on feeding and mulching heathers, see their "Basics" page at http://www.rockspray.com/basics.htm .

Watering Heathers

Ever wonder why you never see huge heathers offered for sale at your garden centre? If he wanted to offer them, the nurseryman (or woman) would have to pot them in bathtubs! Heathers form huge, fibrous root systems, which is why mature, established heathers are so wonderfully drought tolerant.

On the other hand, the heather you buy in the one gallon pot is just a baby and hasn't developed much of a root system yet. When you first bed a heather, it will need to be watered at least twice a week to prevent it from drying out, and may need to be watered daily in hot weather. Don't wait to water until the plant is distressed; because heathers are actually dwarf shrubs, they don't show any warning signs such as wilting. By the time a heather looks distressed, it's too late; it's dead!

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