{"title":"Fothergilla (Witch Alders)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe genus honors John Fothergill, the London physician and Quaker whose garden at Upton held one of the great collections of American plants in the eighteenth century, and who paid for William Bartram's four years of travel through the Southeast. The species name of the dwarf witch alder honors Alexander Garden of Charleston. Two names on one small shrub, and both belong to the same network of correspondents who were sending Southeastern plants to England before the Revolution.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat the plants do is simple and very good. White bottlebrush flowers open before the leaves in early spring, honey-scented and full of bees; the summer foliage is clean blue-green, and 'Blue Mist' is decidedly blue; and the fall color is the best argument of all, yellow through orange to scarlet, often all three on a single leaf. \u003cem\u003eFothergilla gardenii\u003c\/em\u003e stays low and suckers gently, \u003cem\u003eFothergilla major\u003c\/em\u003e reaches head height, and the intermediate hybrids 'Mt. Airy' and 'Sea Spray' split the difference. Give them acid soil, moisture, and sun for the strongest color.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"fothergilla-major","title":"Fothergilla major","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe native fothergillas were choice but scarcely available garden shrubs when Woodlanders first began to offer them in 1980, and mountain witch alder is the largest and, to our eye, the best of them. \u003cem\u003eFothergilla major\u003c\/em\u003e makes a rounded deciduous shrub of six to eight feet, slow and dense, and gives two distinct performances a year. In April the bare or barely-leafing branches carry upright white bottlebrushes, an inch or two long, made not of petals but of crowded stamens with pale yellow anthers, and they carry a honeyed scent that reaches further than the flowers look able to manage. In October the blue-green leaves turn all at once to orange, scarlet and yellow, often several colors on a single leaf.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe genus honors John Fothergill, the eighteenth-century English physician and Quaker who kept one of the great gardens of American plants at Upton in Essex and paid collectors to keep it supplied. Witch alder is the country name: alder for the leaves, which look convincingly like an alder's, and witch from the family, Hamamelidaceae, shared with witch hazel, sweetgum and loropetalum. A note on the name for anyone who follows taxonomy, since the labels have shifted: Kew now treats \u003cem\u003eFothergilla latifolia\u003c\/em\u003e as the accepted name and files \u003cem\u003eF. major\u003c\/em\u003e as a synonym, along with the older \u003cem\u003eF. monticola\u003c\/em\u003e. We keep the name gardeners actually search for.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is a plant with a real conservation stake. Mountain witch alder is uncommon and local in the wild, scattered through the southern Appalachians and the Alleghenies across five southeastern states with a disjunct outpost in Arkansas, and NatureServe ranks the species G3, vulnerable. There is no ethnobotany to report, no old medicine or dye or food use; the shrub simply never grew commonly enough to become useful to anybody. Growing a nursery-propagated plant is a quiet way of keeping a scarce native in cultivation, and the spring flowers are worked over by bees from the moment they open.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSite mountain witch alder in sun or semi-shade in good, moist, acid, well-drained soil with plenty of organic matter, and give the shrub room to round out rather than shearing the natural shape away. Full sun buys the strongest fall color; too much shade thins the flowering and dulls October. The plant suckers gently at the base, which builds a handsome multi-stemmed clump over years rather than a running colony. Pair with rhododendron, leucothoe, native azaleas and ferns at a woodland edge, or use as a specimen where both the April scent and the autumn blaze will be walked past. Hardy through USDA zones 4 to 8. One honest caution: the roots dislike drying out, so mulch well and water through the first summers.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057871851635,"sku":"FOTH-MAJO-01G","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-365.jpg?v=1720138215"},{"product_id":"fothergilla-gardenii","title":"Fothergilla gardenii","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis one is named for a doctor and a place. The epithet \u003cem\u003egardenii\u003c\/em\u003e honors Alexander Garden, the Scottish physician who settled in Charleston in 1752 and was first to find this shrub, describe the species, and send a plant across to England, the same Garden the gardenia is named for, though this Carolina native may be the truer monument. (The genus belongs to his English correspondent Dr. John Fothergill, in whose garden the shrub later grew; the species is Garden's.) Their home is the southeastern coastal plain, the low acid country of bogs and pine savannahs from the Carolinas to the Florida panhandle and Alabama, scattered and never common, the kind of habitat that disappears quietly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey are the dwarf of the genus, and the earlier to bloom. In spring, ahead of the leaves, the bare twigs set short white bottlebrushes, petalless, all stamen and honey scent, opening a little before the taller mountain fothergilla and among the first things the bees work when the season turns. Summer brings small, rounded leaves in the cool blue-green the species is known for, the selected forms bluer still. Then fall, when the whole low mound turns at once, orange and red and gold often on a single leaf, color out of all proportion to two feet of shrub.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey keep to their origins. Two to three feet, slow, mounding and suckering gently at the base into a tidy colony, and particular about water: acidic soil, steady moisture, sharp drainage, and no drought, which they tolerate far less gracefully than their upland cousin F. major. Give them the damp acid corner they came from and they ask for nothing else. Hardy well north into zone 5, and deer mostly leave them alone.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWorth knowing before you buy, anywhere: most of the dwarf fothergilla in the trade is actually Fothergilla × intermedia, the garden hybrid. This is the species itself, the small Carolina native Garden pulled from a coastal bog. A four-season shrub with a Charleston pedigree and a fall display that embarrasses plants twice the size.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057871982707,"sku":"FOTH-GARD-01G","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-363.jpg?v=1720138219"},{"product_id":"fothergilla-gardenii-blue-mist","title":"Fothergilla gardenii ‘Blue Mist’","description":"\u003cp\u003eFothergilla gardenii is a small deciduous shrub, usually three to four feet tall, and a native of the southeastern coastal plain, where the plant haunts moist, peaty pinelands and bogs. A member of the witch-hazel family, Hamamelidaceae, and a close cousin of the witch-hazels themselves, dwarf fothergilla shares the family gift for honey-scented late-winter and spring bloom on bare or barely-leafed stems.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe flowers are the first delight: showy white bottlebrushes, an inch or two long, made not of petals but of a haze of long cream stamens tipped in yellow anthers, sweetly fragrant, opening in spring before or with the emerging leaves. Because the color comes from the stamens rather than petals, the whole shrub reads as a soft cloud of white, a woodland-edge plant that carries real presence for its modest size.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'Blue Mist' is the reason to seek this particular selection, chosen at the Morris Arboretum in Pennsylvania for the cool, glaucous blue cast of the summer foliage, a rare and welcome color among small shrubs. Honesty compels a note that Woodlanders has always made plainly: 'Blue Mist' does not carry the fiery autumn color of some other fothergillas, trading the blaze of fall for that distinctive blue-green summer dress. The plant is adaptable to most garden soils in sun or light shade, hardy well north of the wild range, and deservedly popular.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUse dwarf fothergilla at the front of a moist, acid border, along a woodland edge, or in a mixed native planting where the blue foliage can cool the greens around the plant and set off darker leaves. The spring bloom feeds early bees, deer tend to pass the shrub by, and the compact frame suits small gardens and foundation beds. Pair with blueberries, itea, native azaleas, and other acid-loving companions in moist, humus-rich ground.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057872048243,"sku":"FOTH-GARD-BLUE-MIST-01G","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/Fothergilla_gardenii_Blue_Mist_Woodlanders_1.webp?v=1746552252"},{"product_id":"fothergilla-x-intermedia-mt-airy","title":"Fothergilla × intermedia 'Mt. Airy'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe native fothergillas were choice but scarcely available garden shrubs when Woodlanders first began to offer them back in 1980. This one, a hybrid of Fothergilla gardenii and F. major, was found by Dr. Michael Dirr at the Mt. Airy Arboretum in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has since become the most widely grown fothergilla of all, and deservedly so.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFothergilla belongs to the witch-hazel family, Hamamelidaceae, and shares that family's gift for honey-scented bloom on nearly bare stems. In early spring, before the leaves unfold, 'Mt. Airy' opens fat white bottlebrushes made not of petals but of a haze of cream stamens tipped in yellow anthers, sweetly fragrant and alive with the first bees of the season.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen the plant does the trick that made the selection famous. Where many fothergillas color unevenly, 'Mt. Airy' turns reliably and brilliantly in fall, the neat blue-green summer leaves igniting into clear yellow, orange, and red all at once, a bonfire held on a tidy four-to-six-foot frame. Few shrubs of the size give so much across so many months.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUse 'Mt. Airy' in a mixed or native border, at a woodland edge, or in a foundation planting where the spring fragrance and autumn fire can both be enjoyed at close range. The rounded, well-behaved habit needs little pruning, deer generally pass the shrub by, and the plant pairs beautifully with blueberries, itea, native azaleas, and other acid-loving companions. Give sun to part shade and good, well-drained soil.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42057872212083,"sku":"FOTH-INTE-MT-AIRY-01G","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/DETA-366.jpg?v=1720138227"},{"product_id":"fothergilla-x-intermedia-sea-spray","title":"Fothergilla × intermedia 'Sea Spray'","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Sea Spray' has long traveled under the name \u003cem\u003eFothergilla major\u003c\/em\u003e, a tidy assumption the botanists have since complicated. Run through a flow cytometer, the plant turns out to be a hybrid, \u003cem\u003eF.\u003c\/em\u003e × \u003cem\u003eintermedia\u003c\/em\u003e, the meeting of mountain witch-alder (\u003cem\u003eF. major\u003c\/em\u003e) and the dwarf coastal \u003cem\u003eF. gardenii\u003c\/em\u003e, the little shrub Charleston's Alexander Garden sent across to England in the 1760s, in a genus already named for John Fothergill, the London physician who tried to grow half of America in a single garden. All of which makes the name, for once, honest. Most Sea Spray christenings are wishful; this one actually carries the coast in the blood.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat you notice first is the foliage: cool, glaucous, blue-green straight through summer, as though someone had breathed sea-fog across the leaves and it never quite lifted. In spring, before that color settles, the plant sends up white bottlebrush spikes, petal-less, all stamen, honey-scented, opening as the new leaves unfurl rather than ahead of them. Early pollinators find the flowers well before much else is awake. The habit stays modest and oval-rounded, more contained than a straight major, which is part of why collectors keep asking after a plant still genuinely scarce in the trade.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFall is the honest part. On a good site 'Sea Spray' colors up; on others, as Michael Dirr noted from the lone specimen he had seen, at Bernheim in 1997, the plant settles for a quieter dark red-brown rather than the orange-and-scarlet riot the genus is known for. More sun, better color. We will not promise fireworks every November.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOur stock traces to a young plant at Hopelands Gardens, the Iselins' fourteen-acre estate here in Aiken, set there by Bob McCartney himself, beneath live oaks and the deodar cedars Hope Iselin planted a century before him. Cuttings off Bob's specimen, grown on at the nursery. Provenance you could drive to.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey ask for little in return: acidic soil that stays moist but drains, a spot in sun to part shade, a mulch over those shallow roots. Deer pass them by. This is the kind of shrub you set in among oakleaf hydrangea and native azaleas and then find yourself watching anyway, the blue of the leaves, the honey on the spring air, the slow pleasure of a thing that manages to be two places at once.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43515283406963,"sku":"FOTH-MAJO-SEA-SPRA-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/FothergillaSeaFoamWoodlanders1.jpg?v=1755271197"}],"url":"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/collections\/fothergilla.oembed","provider":"Woodlanders","version":"1.0","type":"link"}