Chinese Snowball Viburnum


It may have been the best twelve dollars I've ever spent. I wasn't looking for it two and a half years ago when I came across it at a nursery. But large white snowball blooms on a sturdy, very tough, handsome shrub that can be pruned into a small accent tree had me at 'Hello'. 



I was smitten even BEFORE I knew what a blowzy, dramatic cut flower it made...hydrangea-like in form, but more rugged and less fussy in the vase.



OR before I know how easy care, low maintenance, cold hardy and heat tolerant it is. 



I did indeed prune and sculpt it into a small tree (as suggested by my pal Rebecca Reed in this article she wrote for SOUTHERN LIVING). I revealed the beautiful chalice shaped architecture of its branches by removing interior leaves and side shoots...


 skeletonizing its form so that the blooms were larger...



 and limited... to the


branch's tips. Thinning out the foliage allowed me to see through to the contrasting dark lattice on the fence behind it...




and to the Golden Vicary Privet



I espaliered against the short fence on the potager side...


to the east. When the morning sun shines through the lime green foliage of the privet...


to beam then on the equally fluorescent lime-green viburnum globes...


the effect is beyond magical.  An audible gasp is not too extreme a reaction if I do say so.


Of all the beauties in my garden that I was fretting over during the freeze warning Monday night...



(thank goodness I dodged THAT  frozen bullet...for which I am ever so grateful...as a friend of mine said recently, Mother Nature is extremely bi-polar this year)


I was anxious about my SNOWBALL VIBURNUM most of all. It put out a handful of blossoms last spring and fall, but this season is its first to be truly spectacular.


If you have the desire...and can squeeze in one of these magnificent specimens, go here, GARDENER'S DIRECT and order one.



 It will not, I assure you...disappoint.




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