Friday Fabulous Flower - made in the shade, Neillia

The Phactors' gardens are sun challenged because of all the big trees, so shade gardens it is.  Shade loving ephemerals, don't actually love shade, they deal with it by growing in the brief window of spring sun time before the leafy canopy above closes. Then most of them die down, their season being over.  So then what?  In the search for shade-loving and shade-tolerating shrubs, TPP discovered Neillia sinensis, Chinese neillia, (KNEEL-lee-ah cy-NEN-sis) at the Missouri Botanical Garden. It was growing at the back of a garden and no one could find the label. However, the flowers had a large tubular hypanthium, and with the double saw-toothed leaves, it was clearly a member of the Rose family. Then it was a not too difficult task to figure out what it was.  Ours loves its shady post, although it takes some space; the shrub is just over 6 feet tall with elegantly arching stems, and it does tend to spread so you either give it a lot of space or continue to spade out the new shoots.  However at the beginning of May these lovely drooping racemes of pink flowers appear that really make this shrub worth having.

Friday Fabulous Flower - Chinese Neillia

Our constant search for shade-loving plants has produced a number of survivors, a few not bads, a very few nices, and one clear winner, Neillia sinensis.  This shrub grows really well and does not appear to be soil fussy. It grows with a nice loose rounded form of arching branches (if not pruned poorly) rather like a Spirea to which it is related.  The bush is about 6' by 6'. And it has a great flowering display of pink flowers (that's quite a hypanthium), not as gaudy as an azalea, but nice enough for heavy shade.  It does tend to spread a little, but not in a frightening way. Unfortunately the bun-buns like it, so it requires winter caging in our gardens. TPP saw this growing at the Missouri Botanical Garden in heavy shade.  The plant is not common in commercial nurseries as yet.  Also found a smaller, sprawling shrub called Stephanandra incisa; it also grows well in shade, but the flowering display is rather quiet (small flowers), and the bun-buns really love it (one got eaten to the ground), so in general more of a "not bad".