Viburnum - Best place to order?

I've fallen in love with Viburnum! Local nursery's have them but most aren't marked, just a tag "Viburnum." I'm interested in making sure my fall/ winter birds have food, and of course beauty in the garden.

Any suggestions as to the best place to order from?

Thank you!

Annie

Well, you don't live close enough to the Valley...

There are innumerable places to order quality plants from. Garden Watchdog would be a plausible place to peruse, primarily. Start there, and then ask after the ones that seem promising.

You don't show where you garden, other than zone 5a, but I think I've seen you post over on ORVG so I'll assume you are in OH or thereabouts. Lots of good folks on that forum that know their way around OH nurseries.

If your local nurseries can only bother to label things halfway, offer to pay them half of what they're asking. Shape 'em up in a hurry. Bet they don't just label things Oak or Maple, do they?

If you are studying up on the genus, you probably know that you get best fruiting with multiples of a species with overlapping bloom times that are not identical clones. Example: Crimson Tide™ and Cardinal™ arrowwood make good cross-pollinating partners.

Good luck in your hunt. If you want to post with questions about specific nurseries, or about locating specific plants, I can help steer you. Or DMail, if you don't want to broadcast the sleuthing.

Not sure what the shipping would be to your area, but I have bought most of mine from Fairweather Gardens. Great stuff. They are on my gold list. Most of the trees and shrubs in my garden has come from them.

http://www.fairweathergardens.com/

Yes, you're correct, Ohio. I'll just fess up and tell you what I ordered (from Bluestone Perennials). I can change the order up until the week before I pick them up the first week in May.

Viburnum dilatatum Cardinal Candy (7 plants, saw the picture with all the berries and started clicking)

V. nadum Winterthur (1)

Virburnum dentatum Blue Muffin (2)

I had a lot of space set aside for Hydrangea, which I really like, but would prefer to have the Viburnum that I love, and more importantly, feed the birds. Some of these will be in the front of the house, others in the back. The distance is too far for cross pollination so viburnum in the front and back will need their berrying friends planted with them.

A few recommendations:

One: I'll be really surprised if you can hide your plants from your pollinators - but you can try.

Two: Of all the Linden Viburnum, I think you've picked the poorest performer. If you are going to install that many plants, you really should have 'Asian Beauty', 'Catskill', 'Erie', and 'Iroquois' before buying Cardinal Candy™. Your birds will thank you - and you can also compare production for yourself. 'Michael Dodge' provides yellow fruit.

The image I'm attaching will show a great range of this wonderful shrub - Cardinal Candy™ is toward the right and rear with the clumps of fruit on the tips. Every other Linden Viburnum in the mass planting surpasses it (besides CC, represented are 'Iroquois', 'Erie', 'Asian Beauty', and 'Oneida').

Three: 'Winterthur' will need a pollinating partner; V. nudum 'Brandywine' should be easy to locate.

Four: Another lead balloon - there are many many many higher performers than BM, but it has a cute name. You will at least need to provide a pollinating partner for it as well. Look for overachievers like Crimson Tide™ and Cardinal™.

Some others you should add - for variety, toughness, extent of bloom time, fall color, evergreen-ness, etc...

**Viburnum x pragense

**Viburnum x 'Conoy'

**Viburnum cassinoides (sometimes called V. nudum var. cassinoides) and clones

**Viburnum x burkwoodii and clones, especially 'Mohawk'

**Viburnum x 'Cayuga'

**Viburnum x juddii

**Viburnum sargentii and clones

**Viburnum sieboldii and clones

**Viburnum prunifolium and clones

**Viburnum rufidulum and clones

You can never have too many viburnums (even if some are underachievers).

Two: Of all the Linden Viburnum, I think you've picked the poorest performer.


Great Information, thank you so much! I was looking up the names on Daves unitl very late last night.

I'm a sucker for a beautiful picture. The one of Cardinal Candy was beautiful, chock full of fruit, and I started clicking the buy now button. I cancelled the order for all of them this morning.

I've been going over & over my garden plans for weeks now and believe I have room for 12, probably 13, Viburnum. Feeding the birds is a passion of ours. We fed them about 300 lbs of raw peanuts and 325 lbs of seed and home made suet mixes over the winter. I think the berries would compliment their winter diet.

Off to do more reading and will post a list before I order this time! Again, thank you!

Annie

As I was driving to work today, I thought of another northerly species that does poorly for me but should hit right in your Ohio sweet spot:

•Viburnum trilobum and clones

Perfect for persistent winter fruit, which should fit your bird-feeding imperative.

Far be it from me to steer you from the Viburnum Quest, but you should also think about adding as many Ilex verticillata selections into your landscape for amazing winter show and late winter bird forage. The winterberries as a group are outstanding.

I only grow 15-20 different ones of those...

Thanks for the suggestions. My head hurts. I've been looking at pictures and reading about Viburnum until I can't see straight and am still unable to decide. Also, why are there rarely pictures of the pollinators? Are they unattractive?

llex verticillata? Really, only 15 - 20 of them? I'm fried from trying to figure out Viburnum!

I'm not sure what you mean by "rarely pictures of the pollinators".

Pollination occurs between separate plants, since many/most viburnums are relatively self-infertile.

So - if you plant 'Winterthur' and 'Brandywine' (which are the same species Viburnum nudum), they will cross-pollinate and you should have full fruiting on both plants. If you only planted two 'Winterthur' plants, you'd have much poorer (if any) fruiting.

Similarly, plant an 'Asian Beauty' and an 'Erie' together (both Viburnum dilatatum). They'll pollinate each other and hold fruit all winter long.

Winterberries (Ilex verticillata) are dioecious, a whole different matter, where male flowers and female flowers are on separate plants. You need male plants (like 'Jim Dandy' or 'Southern Gentleman') planted in range of female plants (like 'Red Sprite' and 'Winter Red'). Then, the male pollen will be transferred to the female flowers by insect activity, and the female plants will be laden with fruit.

These winterberries have all done well for me:

'Tiasquam'
'Shortcake'
'Red Sprite'
'Stoplight'
'Winter Red'
'Winter Gold'
'Bonfire'
'Harvest Red'
'Southern Gentleman'
'Jim Dandy'
'Rhett Butler'
'Scarlett O'Hara'
'Bright Horizon'
'Quitsa'
'Earlibright'
'Maryland Beauty'
'Oosterwijk'
'Cacapon'
'Shaver'
'Goldfinch'
'Chickemmoo'

There might even be a few more, but my temple's throbbing now...

Thank you for not flicking me off like an annoying tick and answering all my questions. I probably have a book from all the notes I've made from your suggestions, observations and experiences shared here. I'm really trying to get this right even though the attic light blinks off and on after hours of reading and looking at pictures.

A lot of websites I looked at listed the pollinator by name but had no picture. It made me wonder if they might be unattractive and best planted and hidden behind the garage or barn. Happy to hear that isn't the case.

The birds & I thank you for being so generous and patient.

Annie

Well, I'm really interested in gardeners having as much success with viburnums as I have. If I can't bother to share some of the basic information on getting rolling, well, what good is it?

Keep after it - we'll expect a full report.

Good thing I don't crumble under pressure (grin). I promise to not only give a full report and updates, but pictures to go with it. Again, thank you.

filled my note pad here VV - thx

I e-mailed Classic Viburnums and spoke with Gary Ladman today. He's a very nice man and was so helpful & patient. He gave me a lot of help and ideas for choosing plant size and the best way to ship. He knew his entire inventory just from memory. In the first e-mail I told him the list of viburnum I wanted didn't come from me but were customized suggestions from ViburnumValley. There was no way I could have come up with all those wonderful viburnum on my own. Gary agrees it's a great collection! I ordered every one that ViburnumValley suggested. Thank you, ViburnumValley. I'm constantly amazed at the kindness of Gardener's!!

Annie

"A.T." Annie:

Yeah, but we'll turn on you if you don't take good care of those Viburnum...

Here's 'Catskill' (near) with 'Asian Beauty' - and a little Bignonia capreolata sneaking in on the left.

They're just beautiful! Approximately how old are they?

After my shameless and obnoxious behavior to get the perfect "V V Customized" viburnum package do you really think I'm going to neglect the new darlings? Ha! I'll be a dedicated steward to them, till death do us part. Gary even hooked me up with the right fertilizer too. I'm mapping out the areas to plant them and getting the holes dug and soil amended. In about 2 weeks they'll arrive. Do you have a cigar preference?

Actually, I'm a wine consumer.

Let's pop a cork (rather than smash a bottle) to launch this new endeavor. I think there's a few Ohio wineries that produce some bubbly...

Bottle smashing is fun! You've got D-mail.