We all want color in our gardens, combined with easy care, and if any plants fit that description it is the ‘Wine’ series of Weigela bushes. With their rich purple leaves and bright pink flowers these plants bloom for weeks and weeks, and even when they aren’t in bloom the foliage always looks great and warms your garden beds with a burgundy glow. The original Wine & Roses is a medium-sized shrub that can quickly grow to 6 feet tall and wide, which is too large for lots of gardens. To satisfy the need for smaller plants there has been a flurry of breeding activity, so now we bring you that same great coloring in a smaller shrub – the Spilled Wine® Weigela. Reaching barely 3 feet tall, this compact version has all the great features of the original, but in a size that fits smaller spaces, and it is great for planting towards the front of your shrub beds, where you can really enjoy it.

Growing the Spilled Wine® Weigela

Size and Appearance

A small deciduous shrub, the Spilled Wine Weigela grows rapidly into a bush between 2 and 3 feet tall, always mounding with a wider-than-tall shape that is perfect for filling spaces in your beds, without being too tall. The stiff stems have brown, textured bark, and the leaves are carried in clusters all along them. The smooth, glossy leaves are about 3 inches long, with a graceful oval form, tapering to a pointed tip, with a slightly serrated edge. The color of the foliage when the leaves first expand is a very dark purple, with a dark gray overtone – almost black and very striking. As the leaves mature they turn a gorgeous wine red, and they stay that way, without greening, all summer long and through fall as well. That powerful solid color is a great anchor in your garden, with or without its blooms.

You will see the first blooms opening on your plant in late May or early June, and you can expect a good 6 weeks of flowers, with some additional blooms often opening in early fall as well. The fascinating tubular flowers are carried in clusters of about a dozen, all along the stems, and these large flowers thrust up and out like a chorus of trumpeters. They are large – 2 ½ inches long – with a slightly flared mouth, and colored rich deep red to purplish-pink. They look fantastic against that dark foliage. Each bloom is decorated with a prominent white stigma inside it – the flower part that receives the pollen. These blooms are adored by hummingbirds, and you will enjoy these aerial jewels visiting your bush repeatedly.

Using the Spilled Wine® Weigela in Your Garden

This tough and easy-care shrub is perfect for the foreground of your beds, in front of taller shrubs, or planted around your home in front of evergreens. Its shorter size means it can be planted beneath windows without blocking them or used as a low border along a path or driveway. It can also be planted in tubs and boxes, alone or with complementary plants, such as silvers, blues, lilacs or yellows. With its low, wide form you can space it up to 3 feet apart in group plantings or rows, so a few plants fill a large area, without being tall or crowding out other plants.

Hardiness

The Spilled Wine Weigela is hardy in all but the coldest and hottest zones. It is ideal for all temperate gardens across most of the country, from zone 4 to zone 8.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

Full sun is the best for the Spilled Wine Weigela, as this will give you both the brightest foliage color and the most flowers. It will take a couple of hours of shade a day, but too much will cause the leaves to fade to greener tones and reduce flowering substantially. This plant will grow in any well-drained soil, including poor urban soils. It is very adaptable and not at all demanding, and it grows almost anywhere.

Maintenance and Pruning

Very little maintenance is needed for this tough and easy plant. The flowers drop naturally, and the leaves are small enough not to make a mess. In poor soil spring mulch can be helpful, but you can just leave this bush to take care of itself. Pests and diseases are rarely ever problems, and deer normally leave it alone.

Once it has been growing for a few years you can start pruning, in summer right after the flowers are gone. Trim back the short side-stems that have carried flowers to just an inch or two long and remove any weak or dead stems completely. Older plants can have some of the thick, old stems removed completely, to encourage new, vigorous growth.

History and Origin of the Spilled Wine® Weigela

Weigela florida is the most grown shrub from this small group, and it doesn’t come from Florida at all. The name is from ‘florid’, meaning ‘flushed red’, and the plant comes from Japan, China and Korea. It was introduced in 1845, first to Europe and then into America. It has been a popular flowering shrub for early summer ever since. The original plants had green leaves, but in the 1990s the plant called Wine & Roses® (‘Alexandra’) was found in Boskoop, in the Netherlands. That was also where, in 2007, Kees Jan Kraan found a unique seedling among the Weigela plants he was breeding. He named it `Bokraspiwi` and it was patented by Spring Meadow Nursery, Inc., of Grand Haven, Michigan, in 2013. They called it Spilled Wine® and released it as part of their ‘Wine’ Weigela series of Proven Winners® shrubs.

Buying the Spilled Wine® Weigela at The Tree Center

Everyone loves Wine & Roses®, and we know that Spilled Wine® is going to be just as popular – even more so probably, because of its more compact size. Order your bushes now, while we have stock remaining, and enjoy months of reliable and easy color in your summer garden.