Fothergilla x intermedia 'Mt. Airy'

The 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.

Fothergilla 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.

Then 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.

Use '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.