Spiraea - Growing Guide

This is a genus of fully hardy small growing shrubs suitable for the shrub border. The smaller growing forms can be ideal rockery plants and the taller growing forms make informal hedges at the sides or edges of a border. The varieties which we offer are all deciduous and all are best grown in full sun.

These plants are grown both for their interesting foliage variations and, also, for their corymbs or panicles of flowers in spring or summer. Some spiraeas flower on the previous year’s wood so you must take care pruning them or you will lose next year’s crop of flowers. The only pruning necessary on established plants is therefore simply to thin out some of the less vigorous older stems. Other spiraeas flower only on the current season’s growth and these need a light trim when they are dormant to increase next year’s flower production.

Spiraea are untroubled by any pests and diseases and best propagated by softwood cuttings.

S. ‘Arguta’ can grow and spread (eventually) to become a shrub 6-8ft tall with a similar spread. It flowers away surprisingly early in the spring season with saucer shaped white flowers in corymbs.

S. betulifolia ‘Tor Gold’. This is a variety of the birch leaf spiraea with startling light golden yellow leaves and excellent autumn colours.

S. japonica ‘Anthony Waterer’ has pink flowers with some of its leaves margined creamy-white. The new shoots are bronze red. The ultimate height of this variety eventually is 4-5ft.

S. japonica ‘Goldflame’ is perhaps the most popular of the spiraeas. It has bronze-red young leaves turning bright yellow then mid green. It is a dwarfish variety growing only to 30in and has pink flowers.

S. japonica ‘Little Princess’ is a real dwarf grower which forms a dense mound. It grows only to about 20in and has rose pink flowers.

S. japonica ‘Magic Carpet’ is also a dwarf with bright red young foliage early in spring, later turning yellow. Pink flowers.

S. japonica ‘Shirobana’ (syn. ‘Genpei’) is a dwarf with the peculiar habit of producing both white and pink flowers on different flower heads as well as in the same one.

S. nipponica ‘Snowmound’ grows with us to around 6ft with a similar spread. The flowers appear in midsummer in corymbs of white.

S. thunbergii is the only variety we offer which can retain its leaves in milder parts of the country. It grows to about 5ft with a similar spread and has stalkless corymbs of white flowers all along the shoots in spring and early summer.