Showy spiraeas

Quick-growing, hardy and reliable, spiraeas are useful garden shrubs that provide a long season of interest from spring to autumn, says Anne Swithinbank

- Anne Swithinbank

SOME plants are easy-going, adapt readily to most garden situations and give their owners so little heartache they might be taken for granted. This could apply to spiraeas, yet these deciduous shrubs have a lot to give. Members of the rose and hawthorn family, there are around 80 species and numerous cultivars, mainly of Spiraea japonica.

Few gardens of the 1980s were without Spiraea japonica ‘Goldflame,’ a low-growing shrub introduced about 50 years ago. Its leaves emerge salmon pink, change to bright yellow-green and are joined by pink blooms during summer. This is still a good choice, but plants sometimes revert to plain green and there are plenty of excellent and equally chameleon-like newer cultivars.

Taller spiraeas

Their yellow, gold and even plum-colored leaves are perfect for containers, ground cover and low hedges. Other taller spiraeas are wreathed in a festive mass of small white flowers usually in late spring. Use these towards the back of a border where, after flowering, they make cool foliage backdrops for showy summer flowers.

Most of the spiraeas we grow have their origins in China and Japan, where their wild habitats of thickets, woodland edges and riverbanks are not dissimilar to the situations they find in our gardens. As long as soil is reasonably well-drained, they take happily in both light or heavy soils, preferably improved with well-rotted organic matter, and don’t seem to mind whether it is acidic, neutral or alkaline. They are hardy and, being deciduous, rarely suffer from frost damage. Plants are usually left alone by rabbits.

Spiraeas for flowers