Itea virginica ‘Henry's Garnet’

Itea virginica, the Virginia sweetspire, is a native shrub of the wetlands, streambanks, and floodplains of the eastern United States, from New Jersey to Florida and west to Texas. Sometimes called Virginia willow for the shape of the leaves, though the plant is no willow at all, the species is prized for arching, fragrant white flower spikes in early summer and for a fall display of orange, red, and burgundy that rivals far showier shrubs. 'Henry's Garnet' is the selection that made the species a garden staple, free-flowering, with six-inch white racemes and a deep maroon-purple fall color that gives the plant its name.

The history runs straight through Woodlanders. This clone was first offered by the nursery in 1985, simply as 'Selected Form,' propagated from a plant obtained from the Henry Foundation in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, where it had grown for many years since the pioneering native-plant enthusiast Mary Henry first collected it somewhere in Georgia. The Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College later gave the plant the name 'Henry's Garnet,' for the garnet of the fall color and, fittingly, the college's own colors.

Everything good about the wild sweetspire is amplified here. The fragrant white spires arch and nod in early summer, drawing bees and butterflies, and the seeds later feed birds. Come fall the foliage turns a rich, saturated garnet that holds late into the season, deciduous in most of the range but semi-evergreen in the Deep South, where the leaves linger and the fall color is softer. The plant suckers gently into a broad, arching colony.

'Henry's Garnet' is one of the most useful native shrubs for damp ground, thriving in moist to wet soil where many shrubs sulk, and tolerating clay, periodic flooding, even full shade. Use in a rain garden, along a pond edge, massed on a slope for erosion control, or in a mixed border where the fragrant flowers and garnet fall color earn their keep. Give full sun to part shade for the best flowering and color, and pair with other moisture-lovers such as winterberry, clethra, and swamp azalea.