Sweetspires are the graceful native shrubs of the genus Itea, grown for fragrant early-summer flowers and superb fall color. In late spring and early summer they hang slender, arching racemes of tiny white, honey-scented flowers along the stems; come autumn the foliage turns rich crimson, burgundy, and orange, often holding late into the season. Adaptable and easy, sweetspires take sun or shade and, unusually for a flowering shrub, thrive in wet ground.

In the landscape sweetspires are the answer to damp, part-shaded spots that stump other shrubs. They knit into naturalistic and rain-garden plantings, hold soil along a stream or a low, wet edge, and mass into fragrant, arching drifts in early summer. Neat enough for a border and tough enough for the wild margin, they give two strong seasons of interest from one undemanding plant.

We grow sweetspires because they solve a real problem, beautiful shrubs for wet or shaded ground, and because they earn their place in the wildlife garden. The fragrant flowers are alive with bees and butterflies in early summer, and as tough, adaptable natives they suit the regional habitat and the low, damp corners where few other flowering shrubs will thrive.

Give them sun to part shade and soil that stays moist, and let the suckering kinds form a colony where you want ground held. Set them among our Small & Medium Shrubs, pair with our moisture-loving Ferns, and find more regional plants in our Southeastern Natives.