Large Fothergilla

Large Fothergilla

Fothergilla 'Mt. Airy'

(foth-er-GIL-la)

Synonym: Fothergilla gardenii x major, Fothergilla major

Large Fothergilla

Large Fothergilla

Fothergilla major

(foth-er-GIL-la) (MAY-jor)

Synonyms: Witch Alder

This flowering shrub was photographed in the spring. If you look in the background the leaves were just starting to come out. Fothergilla is a nice plant to have in the garden especially some of the newer varieties. It gets to be a large shrub but slowly and is easy to manage. The flowers last a long time and are fragrant. The flowers do not have any petals and are considered bottlebrush types (a personal favorite). The Fothergilla flowers are tactile they have a nice rubbery feel to them. Not enough can be said for the fall color on this plant. It is an amazing shower of yellows, reds, oranges and even some purple. Truly an autumn beauty.

Since it is Sunday come join us at Today’s Flowers. Sunday means a bonus snapshot.

Just a nod to all the tulips we planted this fall. They seem to be having a good resurgence in people’s taste. This Peony flowered type is a couple of seasons old but still looked nice.

Green Threadleaf Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum var. dissectum 'Viridis')

Green Threadleaf Japanese Maple
Acer palmatum var. dissectum 'Viridis'

I wanted to get a few fall foliage pictures and these are what I ended up with. I can keep dreaming of taking those gorgeous landscape shots with all the trees on fire. I can’t even find the right place to try and take a shot like that and if I did I probably wouldn’t be able to capture it. The first shot is a Green Japanese Maple. I like the green ones especially since they can grow in shade pretty well. This tree has had its ups and downs over the years. It had an inexplicable stretch were the bark peeled off the top of the branches and it really thinned out. On one of the gardening forums I am member of this same cultivar did the same thing so I was wondering if it was an incompatible graft or as someone else suggested some sort of sunburn. Anyway it came back from that and unless you look closely you can’t even see any damage. It puts on quite a show in the fall and the winter outline is nice. I think when you use the scientific name for this tree you it is okay to drop the var. dissectum.


This second shot is Sumac. I am not sure which one but it is not the species that grows on the side of the road and in waste lots. It is a handsome garden plant that gets this great red. It also gets hairy orangey-red seeds that look nice. This is not Poison Sumac!


I wanted to post this picture although I could have used a bit more depth of field (a lot more, actually). It is a Maple I had never seen before called Red Vein Maple (Acer rufinerve). It is also known as Honshu Maple and Melon Skin Maple. It is a small tree that is a snakebark type. The fall color was outstanding on the few leaves that were left on the plant. I saw this at the local nursery yesterday and I am kicking myself for not buying it. I guess I could go back but it is really out of the way. I should know better than to hesitate or waffle on something like that. If you see a plant you like and it is hard to get and it is priced fairly reasonably then you got to go for it right then. The Maple was 40% off to top it all off.


This plant is Fothergilla major or Large Fothergilla. It is also known as Witch-alder. It is a lovely plant that has unique petalless flowers and as you can see great fall color. Here is a link to one of my favorite plant sites with more information on Fothergilla:

floridata.com

I like using Fothergilla in moist areas, part shade and woodland gardens. It looks great in all of them.


Finally I saw a funny bumper sticker on the way home yesterday it said:
“Please God help me be the person my dog thinks I am.”
How perfect. So I am posting a picture of one of my dogs, Ruby Tuesday Slippers. I wanted to call her Ruby Tuesday but thought that a reference to the slippers in the Wizard of Oz was nice to have. She is a three-year old Border Collie mix that weighs about 60 lbs. She is quite a dog and I know I think the world of her and judging by the way she acts when I get home she does the same about me. I just hope I can live up to her thoughts. I also have a 12-year old Siberian Husky named after the Hawaiian Island, Molokai. She is a lot different than Ruby but they are the best of friends.

Dwarf Witch Alder (Fothergilla gardenii)

Dwarf Witch Alder
Fothergilla gardenii
(foth-er-GIL-luh) (gar-DEN-ee-eye)
Hamamelidaceae

Since I have houseguests coming from Santa Fe for the week I have much to do around the house. Like cleaning up and moving the stuff out of the extra room (no more storage area). I don’t have much of a garden because I am renting the house I am living in but I am going to tune up the outside too. For the most part I spend almost every day in great gardens and that is enough for me. I guess I live vicariously through my customer’s gardens and the trips to the Botanical Gardens.

Just a couple of words about today’s plant, I love it! Last year I thought this one was dead since it been having a slow decline. The area that it is located in has seemed to get wetter each year but I cut it back and fed it and it has come back. It never ceases to amaze me how plants can hang on and how well they respond to a little extra care. I think this one is one of the dwarf ones and is quite old as it predates me in the garden. It is a lovely elegant shrub when it is happy. The foliage on this one is a bluish/green and it has a whole second season with great colors in the fall (orange, yellow and red).



I wish I had more time to write about Fothergilla and all it's attributes. I am posting this next picture not because it is the best flower picture I have ever taken but for reference about a comment I posted at Ki’s Garden Blog. It is quite an interesting blog that shows a mini-estate garden’s journey through the seasons. Just kidding about the estate part but in my mind it shows what you can do with a little slice of America, and in a way is an example of the quintessence of American gardening. They treat gardening over there, as they should, like an adventure. This is a species (I think) of Weigela. It has pink, red and yellow blooms on the same plant. I had forgotten how nice it looks. The plants are about 5 feet tall but I lop off about 1 to 2 feet a year. The garden has about 25 different cultivars of Weigela and this species. I tend to like all of them.

By the time I got home the doctor had already left for the day so I am going to go up to the emergency room for my tick bite. I just can’t seem to extract the piece of tick still stuck inside. That should be fun, maybe I can take a number and come back when they are ready to see me.

Dwarf Fothergilla (Fothergilla gardenenii)

Dwarf Fothergilla
Fothergilla gardenenii
(foth-er-GIL-luh) (gar-DEN-ee-eye)

This is one of my favorite under used shrubs. This one is the dwarf form but Large Fothergilla (Fothergilla major) is just as nice. The white bottlebrush flowers in the spring are pretty and have an unusual texture and are fragrant. The real show is the awesome red, yellow, orange and purple fall color.

Fothergilla likes to grow in part shade to full sun. It accepts moist to wet soil that must be acidic. This native to the Southeastern United States is a slow grower to about 4 feet. It sometimes times takes awhile to get going but after that it is long lived and trouble free. A very versatile shrub that can be used in mixed shrub borders, the woodland garden and even foundation plantings.

I was in Manhattan yesterday dropping off the camera that Karen broke. I know she didn’t mean to break it. I was a little sad at handing over the camera at the repair store on 13th Street. They didn’t think it was going to be a big deal to fix, which was good news. Everything was so crowded in the city that it was difficult to get any pictures. I visited the Green Market in Union Square and that was interesting. They had some unusual things and I could see why the native New Yorkers were swarming the place.

I am working today since it is going to be a short week with the holiday. I am not complaining there will be plenty of rest coming up during the winter.

(Synonym: Dwarf Witch Alder)

Here are a couple snapshots from the market.