Viburnum was a name the Romans already had, set down by writers who used it for the wayfaring tree colonizing the roadsides of Italy. The genus they named has turned out to be one of the most useful a gardener can keep, a broad company of shrubs and small trees that between them cover nearly every season. Some open flat lacecap plates of white in spring, others gather their florets into full snowball globes, and a good many carry a clove-and-vanilla scent strong enough to stop you on the path. Later come the berries, red or blue or a black that shines, and in the deciduous kinds a fall that runs to wine and copper.

What makes viburnums worth collecting rather than simply planting is how far they range. The Koreanspice group, Viburnum carlesii and the burkwoodii hybrids bred from them, are grown almost entirely for fragrance. The doublefiles hold their branches out in flat tiers and line them with bloom, so that a plant in flower looks snowed upon. Viburnum macrocephalum swells to true snowballs the size of a fist. Against these deciduous performers stand the evergreens, the glossy awabuki and tinus and the rarer cinnamon-leaved sorts, which give a garden its winter walls.

Several of the finest are natives of the American Southeast, and these earn their place twice over. Viburnum nudum, acerifolium, prunifolium and their kin are tough, long-lived, and untroubled by much, and they feed the garden's other residents as generously as they furnish it: pollinators work the spring flowers, and birds strip the fall fruit in a hurry. One old piece of advice still holds. Plant more than a single clone of a fruiting kind, because most viburnums set their best berries only when a different selection stands nearby to pollinate them.

In the garden they ask little and give a great deal, at home as specimens, as informal hedges and screens, or layered into a mixed border where their bulk anchors lighter things. Give them sun to part shade and a soil that is merely reasonable, and most look after themselves for decades. Find the larger kinds among our Large Shrubs and the compact ones among our Small & Medium Shrubs, and look for the native viburnums in our Southeastern Natives.