Brandywine™ Viburnum

When fall and winter roll around once again, our gardens can start to look a little bare and uninteresting. There is one way to change that – with ornamental berries. Brightly colored bunches hanging from your shrubs, perhaps complemented by vibrant fall leaves, are a sure-fire winner on those short, cold days. Many also provide valuable food for birds in winter, and some are edible. Get every one of those benefits and more with one of the most brightly-colored and reliable berry shrubs in existence, the Brandywine™ Viburnum. Its brilliant pink and blue berries and red fall leaves are just what your garden needs to brighten it at the dullest time of year.

The Brandywine Viburnum is an upright, rounded deciduous shrub that grows 5 to 6 feet tall, and just as wide, with many stems giving it plenty of bulk. The slender stems are beige brown, with prominent raised markings on them. Older stems become woodier, with brown, peeling bark. The leaves are oval, 2 to 5 inches long, with a smooth, glossy surface. They are a bold green all summer, and then in the fall they turn brilliant shades of scarlet, red and burgundy, and they stay on the bush with those colors much longer than we see in many other shrubs. 

In May and June the branches are topped with flat clusters of fragrant, creamy white flowers, on a long stalk, that attract many insects. The individual flowers are small, but the clusters are up to 5 inches across, making an attractive flowering display. After blooming these clusters turn into bunches of berries. At first these are small and green, but as fall approaches they turn first light pink, then darker pink, then blue, and then purplish-black. Pink and blue berries are present in the clusters at the same time as these color changes happen, making a wonderful and colorful show in your garden. When the leaves turn color too the whole plant makes a wonderful and vibrant picture in your garden. The berries are acidic, but edible when fully ripened, and they can be sweetened and used in the kitchen, for pies, muffins, or home-made wine.

Use the Brandywine Viburnum in shrub beds around your garden. It is attractive in all seasons, and it is perfect for the back of smaller beds, or the middle of larger ones. Grow it near your house, or out in the garden. It looks great in more natural areas, mixed with trees, and since this is a native plant, it is perfect for a wild garden. In fact, this plant is endangered in some parts of its natural range, so by planting it in your garden you are helping to preserve a lovely native shrub. Grow it as a single specimen, or plant it in larger groupings, or as a screen. Space plants 4 feet apart in groups, and up to 6 feet apart for a row. This plant is very easy to grow, and it is a great plant for adding interest and color to wilder parts of your property, or for low-maintenance gardening.

The Brandywine Viburnum will grow in both full sun and partial shade, so it fits into many places around the garden. It will grow in most average soils, except for very dry ones, and it is happy in moist and wet soils too, making it very useful along streams, around ponds, and in low-lying areas where other shrubs won’t grow. Pests and diseases usually don’t bother it, and it is an easy, reliable and tough plant that everyone can grow and enjoy. If you want to trim it, do this in late fall or winter, removing some of the oldest stems to stimulate new growth. Trimming in summer will reduce the berry crop. Unlike other forms of this plant, it is self-fertile, and it will produce berries even if grown alone. 

The Brandywine Viburnum is a selected, improved form of the native withe-rod, Viburnum nudum. Also known as possumhaw and wild raisin, this plant grows wild in Ontario and Quebec, east to Newfoundland, and all the way down into Florida, in a band stretching west as far as Wisconsin. It was used as both food and medicine by Native Americans. Today, with development and the draining of wet areas it is endangered in some states, and probably no longer found in Connecticut. By growing it in your garden you are helping to keep the gene pool of this species large and viable. As well, the berries are eaten by wild birds, and the flowers are food for adult insects, so you are also helping to conserve them.

Wild plants of the withe-rod can grow to 12 feet tall, but the variety known as ‘Bulk’, and released by Proven Winners® North America as Brandywine™, is more compact, growing only 6 feet tall, with uniquely-bright berry colors, making it an excellent garden plant. It was discovered by Mark Bulk, a nursery grower in Boskoop, the Netherlands. A US patent application is currently under consideration. This great plant is ideal for colorful, easy-care and natural gardening, and the demand for easy plants like that is always high. We know our stock of this great plant will soon be gone, so order now.