Featured Plant

Easily passed by in spring, summer, and fall, Edgeworthia is at its very best come mid-late winter. Right. Now.

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Spring through summer, paperbush blends into the landscape. Attractive, green, lance-shaped leaves dress the stems, hiding the unique branch form. Another handsome shrub, but not much more. In fall, deciduous leaves turn a pale yellow and flag downward, in perhaps its most homely period of the year. This is not a specimen grown for fall color. Late fall and early winter brings a bare shrub, thick stems reaching outward, creating a hemispherical to globular form with age, shoot tips each sporting a thick mass of dormant flower buds. Natural ornaments developed in the previous growing season, welcoming the New Year. You may even smell it before seeing it…at first. Each mass of 30-50 small, pendant flowers opens slowly over time from the outside-in, and as the first individual outer flowers open, the fragrance that is emitted may be more noted than the show. Considered a plant with a precocious habit - the leaves developing after flowering - there are no green, leafy distractions when Edgeworthia is at its floral peak. With a sweet smell that travels some distance, the small, initial flowers on this daphne relative may escape notice until a critical mass of them have opened, announcing their presence with bright yellow centers. This is their season. Their time to shine. And it is very worth the wait.