Viburnum x pragense 'Decker'

A tough, glossy evergreen born of two Chinese parents and a Prague nursery. Viburnum x pragense is the cross of the leatherleaf viburnum, Viburnum rhytidophyllum, with the service viburnum, Viburnum utile, first raised by the plantsman Josef Vik at the Municipal Nurseries of Prague in 1955 and named for the city in 1959. The epithet pragense simply means of Prague, a rare instance of a garden hybrid carrying a birthplace rather than a botanist.

The leaves are the inheritance. Elliptic and up to four inches long, glossy and lightly wrinkled above and felted pale beneath, they are shorter and neater than the bold, corrugated foliage of the leatherleaf parent, and they clothe a dense, multi-stemmed frame of eight to twelve feet in height and spread. Evergreen through most winters, the foliage may brown at the edges where hard cold and drying wind combine, a nuance worth siting for at the northern edge of the range.

In spring, flat-topped cymes to six inches across open creamy white and lightly fragrant, a soft, early show against the dark leaves. The flowers give way to fruit that begins red and ripens glossy black by early fall, often holding on the branches into December and feeding birds through the first cold. Bees and other pollinators work the spring cymes.

'Decker', introduced by Decker Nursery in Ohio, was selected as the more cold-hardy of the Prague viburnums, which carries a handsome evergreen well into zone 5. Set the shrub as a fast privacy screen, an informal evergreen hedge, or a bold anchor in a mixed border, in sun to part shade and well-drained soil. Give room for the full eight to twelve feet, or prune after flowering to hold a height, and enjoy a shrub that brings structure, bloom, and berry across the year.