Sweetspire
Itea virginica
Few flowering shrubs will take a wet spot; this one does, and colors best where the sun reaches it.
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- White
- Sunlight
- Grows in sun or part shade, though the color is strongest in full sun.
- Watering
- Puts up with wet ground, and asks little once it has settled.
- Feeding
- A light feed in spring, and a compost mulch once a year.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- June
- Pruning
- Cut back once the flowers finish — next year's buds form on old wood.
- Mar–Jun Bud Break
- Jun–Aug Flowering
- Aug–Nov Growing
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 3 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 3 ft 11 in
- Between rows
- 4 ft 11 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Running rhizomes
- Working depth
- 4–12 in
- Can reach
- 18 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 8–16 ft across, about 2–4× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 12 in of soil
It travels underground, and it does not stop where you would like it to. Taking the tops off does nothing at all to the run, and every fragment left behind is a new plant. In open ground the only boundary that holds is a barrier sunk two spits deep, or a container with its rim standing clear of the soil.
It suckers into a broad colony, which makes it useful on a damp bank and something to watch at the front of a border.
The habit is Sweetspire’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.
- Generally trouble-free No notable pest or disease problems when grown in the right conditions — one of the easy ones.
Green-leaved shrubs, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com