Interesting Varieties Of Potentilla And Spirea

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Potentilla and Spiraea - ornamental shrubs in your garden design

Photo 1. White-flowered Potentilla - Abbotswood

Ornamental shrubs that will decorate any summer cottage The modern garden of a Russian gardener is an amazing phenomenon, infinitely diverse and constantly evolving.

Only fruit and berry orchards with a traditional set of crops - apple, pear, plum, currant, gooseberry, raspberry, strawberry, etc. are almost gone.

Many owners of the usual six acres successfully cultivate a large number of perennial ornamental shrubs in the vicinity of fruit, berry, vegetable crops.

Thanks to this, the garden becomes long-flowering, fragrant and often even medicinal. Among the plants that are advantageous in any garden, and not only in our climate, cinquefoil and spirea deserve special attention.

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Photo 2. Variety of Potentilla Gold finger Potentilla

or Kuril tea, known in culture for over 300 years, is a widespread ornamental shrub.

This charming plant can withstand frosts down to -39 ° C, grows well and recovers after harsh winters, and is completely unaffected by diseases or pests.

Cinquefoil is undemanding to soils (even withstands heavy, loamy), but will respond with lush growth and abundant flowering if you offer it medium and light loams rich in organic matter.

Potentilla loves sunny places where it manifests itself in all its glory, however, partial shade will also suit it, where beautiful foliage will dominate flowering and will not spoil the impression of itself. Various varieties of Potentilla are diverse both in plant height (50-150 cm) and in flower color.

For example, a wonderful variety of white-flowered Potentilla - Abbotswood, reaching a height of 60-80 cm (see photo 1). Its openwork leaves consist of 5-7 leaves, which, like all cinquefoil, are pubescent on both sides.

Good in the garden varieties Gold finger and Gold star (see photo 2) with large yellow flowers. Unlike these elegant varieties, the bushes of which are no higher than 70 cm, the yellow-flowered variety Jackman`s Variety, reaching a height of 1-1.2 m, is quite suitable for single (specimen) plantings and for hedges.

Photo 4. Spirea Japanese variety Shirobana

Be sure to plant Potentilla varieties with delicate lemon flowers in your garden: Primerose Beauty (about 1 m high) and Longacre (50-60 cm).

Low-growing varieties of Potentilla can be grown not only in curbs, but also in tubs, on stumps. To preserve the compact form of the bush in early spring, you need to pluck out the flowering shoots.

Another ornamental shrub, spirea, is also replete with virtues. Spirea is good not only during the long flowering period, which begins in May. Due to the variety of shapes and color of leaves, spireas are good in borders and hedges all summer and autumn.

Photo 3. Ash spirea

Plant height (depending on the variety) - from a few centimeters to 2.5-3 m. White or pink spirea flowers can be collected in corymbose inflorescences or densely stick around branches curved like arches.

Spirea is very frost-resistant, not susceptible to diseases and pests, not afraid of urban smoke. Loves sunny places, undemanding to soil. The main thing is not to plant it in highly acidic, floating soils. Long-living spirea can decorate your garden up to 25-30 years.

This plant tolerates pruning well; at the end of flowering, the faded shoots are shortened. Old lignified stems are removed completely to stimulate the growth of young shoots.

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Photo 2. Cinquefoil shrub variety Gold Finger

Among the variety of spiraea in our conditions, white-flowered varieties grow excellently: ashen or gray spiraea (see photo 3), gray-haired spiraea, nippon spiraea.

This group of spirits is characterized by flowering on last year's shoots. On annual shoots, Japanese spirea, Bumald's spirea, Albiflora, Alba, Billiard bloom. Bumald's spirea (variety Goldflame) is peculiar - a low-growing shrub that changes the color of foliage depending on the season: from bronze-golden in spring to copper-orange in autumn. An unusually beautiful variety of Japanese spirea - Shirobana (see photo 4), in which some of the flowers on one inflorescence have a pinkish color, the other part is white.

Photo 1. Cinquefoil variety Abbotswood

It is very important that plantings in the garden are made with pure material with known plant characteristics (height, bush habit, type of flowering, flower color, etc.), and specialists of the Hardwick breeding company are seriously working on this.