What's your favorite shrub? (right now anyway)

I actually do have a new favorite shrub. this kalmia latifolia (mountain laurel) is just few feet from the Norway spruce. It's not 'Elf', but I haven't identified it yet. when I do, I'll change the label.

nice grampapa.

There's also a cultivar of Picea abies that is a witches' broom of 'Acrocona' and it's called 'Pusch' or 'Acrocona Pusch' - seen it sold both ways.

It's a true dwarf and grows a couple inches a year. I actually happen to have it, but my plant is still quite young. Same show as 'Acrocona' but smaller red cones produced at the tips of the brances just as 'Acrocona' grows.

If you like cones:
Pinus parviflora 'Tani mano uki' (dwarf shrub - bright pink cones)
Abies koreana 'Aurea' - Yellow slow grow tree with beautiful purple cone.
Abies koreana 'Silver Show' and 'Silberlocke' - Purple cones

Anyway, a few more cool plants.

There are literally tons of plants that produce facinating cones...

Have a good one,

Dax

Dax, I've seen pictures of 'Pusch'. It's a keeper. Thanks for the other suggestions. I started out just looking for a couple of dwarf conifers for some companions for my heathers, but got hooked on them. Now I'm thinking of the heathers as something to fill in around the conifers. So I'm out poking around on the net looking for pictures and sources (not ready to buy yet, but I keep notes) for the ones you mentioned and what do I run into but your pic of 'Silberlocke' and 'Silver Show' on another conifer discussion. You do get around :-) And now I know who to come to for advice gram

I don't know how I missed this one but nice pictures, I love your Deutzia Magicien. This is the first year I have planted a few trees and shrubs and so far my favorite was my Rodie but I love this new Deutzia Scabra a friend from work dug up one of her large ones and gave to me and is finally filling out nicely and after seeing yours well I am going to have to get one..
I ordered a Mockorange snowbelle, Early Amethyst, Petasites Giganteus, and few grasses, since I could not pass up the prices so I can not wait till they grow up..
Here is the Deutzia blooms, she cut off a few branches and brought it to be to see if I wanted the shrub before she dug it up, I will have to wait til next spring to see any flowers off mine.

Not my favorite shrub really, but here's Clethra pringlei doing its thing, and it's always my favorite of the time when it does. I wish it didn't sucker, but it's so very beautiful.

Rosemary

My Oakleaf Hydrangea just started to bloom - it was someone's favorite on this thread. (I'm too lazy to look
it up right now - sorry!)

For conifers... a few from my small collection

Taxus Baccata Watong Gold

Pinus Parviflora Burkes bonsai

And my last for tonight...

Pinus Peuce Miss Cesarini

A new shrub/small tree (as we call them here) that I'd never experienced in my old New Orleans stomping grounds: Ptelea trifoliata, a larval host for the giant swallowtail, and which smells in early spring bloom just like an orange grove. Everybody I rave about it to tells me it smells like a skunk, but I never smelled that smell before somebody crushed a leaf for me. This plant and I are gonna be good friends I think.

Rosemary

My unquestioned favorite most of the year: Vitex trifolia 'Purpurea', which dances for me here on the salty bay where I live. If I lived where the acid loving plants grow, I'm sure it would be Viburnum rufidulum or any gardenia blooming at the time.

There must just be freaky conditions down Seadrift way.

Ptelea trifoliata and Viburnum rufidulum are both calciphiles 'round central KY, common as crickets. Both are pretty happy on average clay loams, circumneutral soils, and don't mind summer heat and humidity. The larva of the giant swallowtail look like bird droppings as they graze on the hoptree/wafer ash or one of their other favorites, Zanthoxylum americanum.

Haven't spent any time sniffing the Ptelea; now I have a new mission.

You won't have to seek it out VV - the way the plant came to my attention is that I smelled it on the air and went searching for the source. (I couldn't believe anybody was growing orange trees in Hempstead!) I didn't know that about the swallowtails and Zanthoxylum...that's another plant common around here, though not americanum?

I think it's not the soil so much here (a seam of gumbo clay on sand) but the salty air, which for a few months in spring blows constantly, and there is very little rain to mitigate it. I have some seedlings of V rufidulum still in community pots and they are not liking this air! The very same seed collection is growing wildly up in Hempstead.

Rosemary

Thank you very much, Tammy. You cool girl!

Grampapa,

Yep, I do get around a bit. Currently, I'm loading my latest batch of conifer photos from the US National Arboretum into the American Conifer Society's Database. I've donated and researched about 1000 entries to date if not more. I'm a conifer "conehead" as we like to say, full through and through.

Email me anytime. And you all once again are welcome to my photo album, and here it is:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v280/Cultivar/

Onward!

Dax

Thanks again, Dax. Seems I'm becoming a very amateur conehead. I'm learning as I go and really appreciate the expertise available here at DG. Just took a quick look at your album and bookmarked. gram