Specialty Gardening: Fragrance for shade, 1 by valrita

valrita wrote:
(grins) Why not one of each? If I HAD to choose one over the others, it would be very difficult. The Sixteen candles is the smallest and will mature at only about 3'W by 2.5'H. It's great for me as a foundation plant. The Hummingbird has nice curvy flowers and only gets a little bigger even though it is currently taller than it is wide. September Beauty has straighter flowers but it blooms for such a long time. It bloomed for almost a month last year. Sherry Sue doesn't have as many flowers and is more open but the color of the bark is really nice. Last year, the order for bloom times were Hummingbird, Sixteen candles, September beauty, then Sherry Sue--but I'm not sure if the amount of sun that they get had something to do with it. They're all easy to grow and they all smell wonderful. Diseases and bad bugs don't seem to bother them. I don't need to acidify my soil for them like I do for my calycanthus. They all leaf out a little later than other plants in the spring. Their autumn color is okay--not good but not bad either. The leaves turn yellow.

This probably wasn't much help for you. There must be someone else on here that has clethras since they are very fragrant. Or perhaps the folks over on the trees and shrubs forum grow them.

Another plant that likes shade is Itea. I have the cultivar named Henry's Garnet. The scent is light but the flowers are nice and the leaves are like a burgundy in autumn. The branches are very nice in winter (picture below of branches taken last week). I would love to add the cultivar Saturnalia. I think there are nice pictures in the plant files of the autumn colors of both of these. The scent is light but these plants have many other great qualities.

Another bush I added last year was Fothergilla 'Mount Airy'. It needs sun but it's a very nice plant. It has bottle brush flowers in the spring that have a light honey scent and beautiful autumn colors. There are pictures in plant files that show the autumn colors.

This message was edited Mar 3, 2009 10:15 AM