The “proper” time to prune spireas is right after they flower, but if the blooms are less important than the foliage, you can prune at nearly any time.īirchleaf spirea has a naturally rounded habit, but if you are a lover of meatball plants, you can prune it a bit more into that shape. Beware though, you do risk pruning off future flowers if you do this. I take a different approaches on the spireas in my yard, often pruning on a whim when I happen to be walking by and decide they need a little shaping. In fact their main drawback is a propensity to get bit large and develop bare legs when left to their own devices for too long. Spireas, of course, are the poster child for low-maintenance plants, which is how they ended up in that maligned landscaper’s trio. Glow Girl, to the right in this photo, anchors a palette of fall color in my garden.
There are other birchleaf spireas (look for a cultivar name that includes ‘Tor’) on the market that look equally lovely, I’ve just not had the opportunity to grow them personally. I’ve talked about Double Play Blue Kazoo here before and it continues to be at the top of my list, but few shrubs in my garden provide the kind of three-season interest I get from birchleaf spirea, specifically Proven Winners’ Glow Girl variety. There are several excellent spireas on the market these days, a testament to the wonders of plant breeding, which has changed it from a reliable but unnoteworthy shrub to a must-have garden shrub. Without fail, I come back to them and eat my words.
One thing I’ve learned gardening is that I really need to stop swearing off plants. Somewhere along the line this combination became the standard planting along every foundation in every new subdivision here.Įven as a novice gardener I swore I’d never plant spirea, such was my disdain for this shrub.
For a time it was, to me, the most boring of shrubs, the least interesting of what I call the “landscaper’s trio” of spirea, daylilies (almost always ‘Stella d’Oro’) and a (usually sickly looking) hydrangea. More than once I’ve written here about the misconceptions I had about spirea.
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