The Virginia Sweetspire is inspiring! This native beauty looks great in almost any landscape and stays lovely with only minimal care. Beautiful tassel like blooms cover this bush in late spring into summer. The light sweet scent of the white flower clusters is irresistible to butterflies AND humans!
The attractive habit of the Sweetspire is mounded and spreading with arching branches similar to a weeping willow. Because of this, this shrub is also known as the Virginia Willow. The fall foliage is attractive and long lasting into winter. It ranges from yellow and orange to red.
The Virginia Sweetspire is a tough shrub that tolerates wet conditions, clay soil, heavy shade, and erosion. This easy to grow shrub is deer and disease resistant and drought tolerant once established.
Love Child® Sweetspire
This sweetspire is adaptable to a variety of soils and will thrive in a spot that gets full sun to part shade exposure in grow zones 5-9.
Sweetspire do not require pruning, this shrub grows on old wood so any pruning and removal of unwanted limbs should be done after blooming is finished.
Spring and fall are ideal times to plant your Virginia Sweetspire. However, if you avoid temperature extremes you can plant almost any time of the year.
Scarlet Beauty Sweetspire
Virginia Sweetspiretolerate sun and shade and are adaptable to a variety of soil including wet and clay. If your soil is nutrient rich yourSweetspire will not require fertilizer. Fertilize in early spring and when planting if your soil is lacking. Choose a basicslow release fertilizer. Water deeply with a hose 2-3 times weekly for the first few months after planting. These shrubs like moist to
Wet soil, but are actually drought tolerant once established. Sweetspiredo not require pruning. Mulching is a good option to protect the roots and helps retain soil moisture.
TheVirginia Sweetspirecan be used practically anywhere in your landscape. Use it as a foundation planting or border around your home or deck. It looks great in a groupplanting, a mixed bed, or as a lone specimen. Sweet Spires work well near water and under treesand are perfectly suited for rain gardens or natural areas. Plant it next to a walkway or patio so you can enjoy the Sweetspire up close.What characteristics define the “perfect” shrub for your landscape? Should it be native? Deer-resistant? Drought tolerant? A source of nectar for pollinators? Low-maintenance? Attractive in more than one season? If you answered yes to any or all of these, then
Sweetspire, Virginia Sweetspire (itea Virginica)
This tough, highly adaptable shrub is native to the United States in USDA zones 6 – 9 from New Jersey to Florida on the Atlantic coast, extending westward throughout the Mississippi River Valley to southern Illinois. In the wild, Virginia sweetspire can be found growing in wetlands, along stream beds and along the margins of lakes and ponds. In the urban landscape, this versatile shrub provides multiple seasons of interest, making it a particularly valuable addition to the ornamental garden.
Virginia sweetspire is an upright or mounded, thickly branched, deciduous shrub with gracefully arching branches. It provides nesting and shelter for wildlife as well as food for bees, butterflies and moths. In the urban landscape, this mid-sized shrub grows 3 to 5 feet tall and has a spreading growth habit. In the wild, it may grow taller and leggier, particularly in moist or shaded sites.
This shrub has three seasons of interest. In late May and June, it is covered in a blanket of 5 to 6 inches long, white, sweetly scented, catkin-like “spires” (thus, the plant’s common name). Lasting for several weeks, the fragrant and graceful flowers are a magnet for bees and butterflies. Depending on the cultivar, the blossoms may either be held upright or cascade gracefully over the foliage. The flowers are produced on last year’s growth (old wood).
Virginia Sweetspire Is A Perfect Shrub
In summer, the floral display is replaced with rich, medium to dark green foliage, which makes the shrub an attractive choice for foundation plantings. The attractive, lustrous leaves are alternate, simple, toothed, elongate, and 1 to 4 inches long.
In autumn, the foliage changes from its rich green summer color to stunning, long-lasting shades of deep red, purple, orange, and yellow. While the floral display in late spring is attractive, it is the rich autumn color that makes this plant especially valued in the landscape. The fall colors vary, depending on sun exposure. Full sun exposure produces the most vibrant fall color.
While it would be nice to say that Virginia sweetspire is the “perfect” shrub for the landscape, it does have one downside — a tendency to sucker. The mother plant produces shoots from the root system that may develop into a colony of slender stems over time. The better the growing conditions, the more it suckers. If grown in drier sites with heavy clay soil, it suckers less vigorously than it does in rich, loamy soil with plenty of moisture. Depending on how you use it in the landscape, the suckering nature of this plant can be viewed as either a positive or a negative attribute.
Sweet Spire: Itea Virginica
Virginia sweetspire is a low-maintenance shrub recommended for medium acid soils with a pH of 5.0 to 6.5 and above. Alkaline soils can cause the foliage to be yellowish (chlorotic) due to a lack of available iron. It prefers moist, well drained to wet soil. Although it is categorized as a wetland species, it thrives just fine with average moisture conditions and can even tolerate droughty conditions. Just keep it well watered the first year to help it become well established. It will be drought tolerant once it is happily established.
It will develop a denser, more attractive habit when grown in a sunny site with at least 6 hours of sun per day, but it adapts well to shadier conditions. In shade, Virginia sweetspire may grow taller and leggier and will not flower as prolifically, nor will its fall foliage colors be as vivid.
Virginia sweetspire is easy to propagate. Stem cuttings, taken between May and September, root in about four weeks. Autumn is the best time to start a new plant by root division. Simply snip one of the suckered roots free of the mother plant.
Itea Virginica (virginia Sweetspire)
Virginia sweetspire is deer resistant and does not have any serious pests or diseases although some selections may be more susceptible to flea beetles and leaf spot.
Adaptable to both sun and shade, as well as to wet and dry areas, this versatile, long-lived shrub is an ideal choice for a variety of landscape situations including:
Bear in mind that it may be difficult to keep Virginia sweetspire within boundaries due to its suckering habit. Give it plenty of room to spread initially.
How To Grow And Care For Virginia Sweetspire
While the species is good, several selected cultivars are improvements. Prior to 1982, there were no named clones, but, since then, approximately a dozen selections or cultivars have become available commercially, including ‘Henry’s Garnet’, ‘Little Henry’, ‘Sarah Eve’, ‘Saturnalia’, ‘Longspire’, ‘Beppu’, ‘Shirley’s Compact’, and ‘Merlot’. Not all of them have consistently good fall color, however. Of the group, the following have excellent fall color and are generally easy to find in garden centers.
