Our beautiful dogwood trees, with their spectacular white or pink blooms, are particularly stunning this year, adding significant charm to our neighbourhoods. There are so many newer varieties contributing to the colour range of pink dogwoods that it’s getting hard to keep up.
As a rule of thumb, dogwoods in the Cornus florida and Cornus nuttallii families are blooming now and about a month later in June, kousa dogwoods will flower.
The Cornus florida family blooms with white or pink flowers. Most well-known is Cornus florida Rubra, a true vibrant pink. There are a few variations, such as C.f. Cherokee Brave and C.f. Cherokee Princess. There is a fairly new dark red variety, called C.f. Ragin Red, which is a real eyecatcher and a more compact dark pink variety, called C.f. Red Pygmy.
Probably the most well-known June-blooming kousa is the pink Cornus kousa Satomi. It’s been putting on quite a show for many years now and adds so much colour to a June garden. A few great additions have been added to the pink kousa lineup, including C.k. Scarlet Fire and C.k. Heart Throb; both are very vibrant and equally deserving of a spot in almost any garden. Other new varieties, like C.k. Milky Way, Celestial Shadow and Snow Tower, are all quite spectacular.
If you love some variegation to spice up your summer foliage, kousa varieties, like Wolf Eyes and Summer Fun, have vibrant cream and green foliage with hints of pink in the fall. Their white flowers further accent these beautiful plants.
The flowers of all kousas go on to produce big, red berries in September. They make a colourful display in early fall but can be a bit messy during an autumn cleanup. Although edible, they are seldom consumed by wildlife or birds.
The white dogwoods that we see blooming right now are mostly Cornus nuttallii White Wonder. This variety was developed in B.C. by a well-known, early horticulturist, H. M Eddie. It is a clean, beautiful tree that grows in a taller, more narrow form and has stunning red fall foliage. Two newer versions of this tree are C.n. Starlight, which is, perhaps, the most disease resistant and C.n. Venus, which is a bit of a showoff, sporting blooms measuring up to seven inches across.
Dogwoods can make an important contribution to almost any garden, both in spring and again in fall. Now, when you can see them in bloom, is a great time to select from your favourites a beautiful dogwood to light up that special spot in your garden.
