Chaste Tree
Vitex agnus-castus
Flowers on wood grown the same season, so a hard late-winter cut costs you nothing at all.
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Blue
- Sunlight
- Full sun, six hours of direct light or more.
- Watering
- Drought-tolerant once established; watering is rarely called for.
- Feeding
- A light spring feed early on, then almost never again.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- June
- Pruning
- Cut hard back in late winter — the flowers come on new wood.
- Apr–Jun Bud Break
- Jun–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Nov Growing
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Apr Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 9 ft 10 in
- In-row spacing
- 9 ft 10 in
- Between rows
- 12 ft 4 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody and fibrous
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 15–20 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 20 in of soil
A shallow woody framework with the fine feeding roots in the leaf litter above it. Those feeders are mostly under the outer half of the canopy rather than against the stem, which is where water and feed should go.
The habit is Chaste Tree’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Lavender, Russian Sage, Salvia, Butterfly Bush
Shrubs, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com