{"product_id":"fothergilla-x-intermedia-sea-spray","title":"Fothergilla × intermedia 'Sea Spray'","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Sea Spray' has long traveled under the name \u003cem\u003eFothergilla major\u003c\/em\u003e, a tidy assumption the botanists have since complicated. Run through a flow cytometer, the plant turns out to be a hybrid, \u003cem\u003eF.\u003c\/em\u003e × \u003cem\u003eintermedia\u003c\/em\u003e, the meeting of mountain witch-alder (\u003cem\u003eF. major\u003c\/em\u003e) and the dwarf coastal \u003cem\u003eF. gardenii\u003c\/em\u003e, the little shrub Charleston's Alexander Garden sent across to England in the 1760s, in a genus already named for John Fothergill, the London physician who tried to grow half of America in a single garden. All of which makes the name, for once, honest. Most Sea Spray christenings are wishful; this one actually carries the coast in the blood.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat you notice first is the foliage: cool, glaucous, blue-green straight through summer, as though someone had breathed sea-fog across the leaves and it never quite lifted. In spring, before that color settles, the plant sends up white bottlebrush spikes, petal-less, all stamen, honey-scented, opening as the new leaves unfurl rather than ahead of them. Early pollinators find the flowers well before much else is awake. The habit stays modest and oval-rounded, more contained than a straight major, which is part of why collectors keep asking after a plant still genuinely scarce in the trade.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFall is the honest part. On a good site 'Sea Spray' colors up; on others, as Michael Dirr noted from the lone specimen he had seen, at Bernheim in 1997, the plant settles for a quieter dark red-brown rather than the orange-and-scarlet riot the genus is known for. More sun, better color. We will not promise fireworks every November.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOur stock traces to a young plant at Hopelands Gardens, the Iselins' fourteen-acre estate here in Aiken, set there by Bob McCartney himself, beneath live oaks and the deodar cedars Hope Iselin planted a century before him. Cuttings off Bob's specimen, grown on at the nursery. Provenance you could drive to.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey ask for little in return: acidic soil that stays moist but drains, a spot in sun to part shade, a mulch over those shallow roots. Deer pass them by. This is the kind of shrub you set in among oakleaf hydrangea and native azaleas and then find yourself watching anyway, the blue of the leaves, the honey on the spring air, the slow pleasure of a thing that manages to be two places at once.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Woodlanders","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43515283406963,"sku":"FOTH-MAJO-SEA-SPRA-01G","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0605\/7505\/5987\/files\/FothergillaSeaFoamWoodlanders1.jpg?v=1755271197","url":"https:\/\/woodlanders.net\/products\/fothergilla-x-intermedia-sea-spray","provider":"Woodlanders","version":"1.0","type":"link"}