Deciduous Flowering Shrubs - Part 1
Woody plants are the backbone of a garden - the bones - providing form the year around. While evergreens make a strong winter statement and can create a glorious show of flowers in their season, deciduous shrubs are not to be overlooked. Their winter form can be attractive; some provide us with interesting leaf form or color and many of them flower for us, too.
Deciduous flowering shrubs pick up where my rhodies and azaleas leave off. Actually, some of them - the early spireas and viburnums precede the rhodies and azaleas. Late May into June, however, is the time for most of my deciduous woodies to strut their stuff.
The Beauty Bush - Kolkwitzia amabilis
Michael Dirr's Manual of Woody Landscape Plants is my bible - my copy is pretty tattered - but I beg to differ with him on his assessment of Kolkwitzia amabilis. He is not fond of this carefree shrub and I most definitely am. I look forward to the fountain of pale pink blossoms at the end of May or first part of June each year.
Dirr complains of the shrub's form, which he describes as vase like and becoming bare at the bottom. Well, I give mine a bit of a hair cut every year so it has a rounded form, the outer branches weeping to the ground in a large circle.
It does tend to throw new branches just at the time of blooming. Since these rather stick out of the mound of flowers, they get on my nerves and I nip them off. But, that's all the maintenance this shrub gets from me.
Major pruning should take place after bloom, since it blooms on old wood. Recommended practice is to remove weak and old stems at ground level - no more than one third of the wood in any year. Do this judiciously since the bark on older stems exfoliates, adding winter interest when they are bare of leaves.
The flowers are a lovely, pale pink; more pink in the aggregate than individually, with, to my nose a slightly dusty, faint, sweet fragrance up close. They are born in clusters at the tips of the branches, almost obscuring the foliage for more than two weeks, depending on the weather - longer if it doesn't get too hot.
This is one of the hummingbird plants, producing a rich nectar for these charmers, early in the season, following the azaleas that they also find attractive.
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