Garden Guru: Fuzzy deutzia's scented, star-shaped flowers create quite the picture

A deutzia renaissance is how my friend Gerald Klingaman wrote about the new love for this fuzzy heirloom that has been around for ages. If you haven't discovered the old-fashioned fuzzy deutzia, then make it a high priority. Your landscape deserves it.

Klingaman, a retired horticulturist with the University of Arkansas, used his deutzias with his azaleas to spread out the glorious spring bloom. At the Columbus Botanical Garden, we used it against a backdrop of bald cypress, cryptomeria or Japanese cedar and the picturesque dawn redwood. The pendulous branches, with what seemed like thousands of small white, lightly scented, star-shaped flowers, created quite the picture.

At the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens, we are using two large specimens behind cold hardy palms and in partnership with heirloom crinum lilies. The look is cottage tropical and certainly pleasing to the eye and enticing you to sit a while. I did just that because another friend, Jason Powell, owner of Petals from the Past in Alabama, mentioned bees and butterflies in conjunction with this nostalgic plant. As I paused to sit on the nearby bench, I did notice there were a variety of bees indeed visiting the top of our 9-foot bushes. That makes it a winner in my book.

Fuzzy deutzia is known botanically as Deutzia scabra and is native to Japan and China. I find most gardeners are surprised to find out it is in the Hydrangeaceae or hydrangea family, where we find another heirloom, the English dogwood or mock orange. It is deciduous, which might be the reason it lost some of its luster for a generation or two. But today, gardeners recognize the beauty of a landscape, and as the leaves fall, you get to see the form and texture our plants possess.

As I have hinted in mentioning our two 9-foot shrubs, you will need to give them space to be all they can be. They can reach 10 feet and spread 8 feet or more as well. They are in full bloom now in Savannah and around May 10 in Columbus. With a wide range of hardiness from zones 5-8, there will be a fuzzy deutzia blooming somewhere in the United States from April through June.

They prefer fertile well-drained soil and bloom best in full sun. I can tell you they perform very well in part sun in Savannah, as well. Maintenance is easy. This is a shrub that looks best when allowed to develop naturally. Always prune out dead wood, but if for some reason you find the need to really prune, do so after spring flowering as it blooms on old wood. As the name suggests, the leaves are rather rough and slightly hairy on both sides.

They are still sold generically at most garden centers but you may find the Pride of Rochester or a pink selection called Pink Minor and an even showier one called Strawberry Fields. I assure you, no matter if you get white generic or a named selection, this shrub will be your spring extender or summer welcome. At the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens, we have fuzzy deutzia, oakleaf hydrangea and Virginia sweetspire all blooming in sequence, which could be partnered in your garden for the start of that magical white garden.

Norman Winter is the director of the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens at the Historic Bamboo Farm, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension. Follow him on twitter @CGBGgardenguru.