Apologies to the Abeliophyllum

In my last post I was extremely miserly with my praise of this early flowering bush - and I admit that I'd completely missed the boat with the most wonderful feature of this shrub - its scent. When I was cleaning up the garden bed I took off a couple of small branches, trimmed them back and put them in a bud vase beside my bed. I was overwhelmed with the lovely sweet fragrance that completely filled the room.

Here it is growing in a dry corner bed under a large eastern white pine that has been amended with compost. It took me a couple of years to figure out how to prune it properly, but I finally figured it out. I like to select branches to remove from the base of the plant so that it remains an open natural looking shrub. Basically it should be pruned the same way as a Forsythia - no cubing, canning or muffinizing permitted!

If I had a large garden I'd be tempted to plant several now that I'm a convert. Abeliophyllum appears to want to sucker and left alone would probably provide a pretty white/pink thicket of flowers that would look terrific against a evergreen border - or naturalized in an open forest situation.