Garden Plant: Blue Muffin Arrowwood Viburnum
Blue Muffin Arrowwood Viburnum
Product Description: Blue Muffin Arrowwood Viburnum
Brilliant Berries Blue Muffin Arrowwood Viburnum
- White Flower Clusters on Compact Plant
- Very Attractive Glossy Green Leaves
- Birds Love the Bright-Blue Berries in Late Summer
- Burnished-Red Foliage in Autumn
- Viburnum with a Nice Compact Outline
- White Flowers Clusters in Early Summer
- Excellent Hedge or Low Screen
- Grows in Full Sun or Partial Shade
- Deer Seem to Leave This Plant Alone
- Pollinate with Chicago Lustre or Arrowwood Viburnum
These days, people are searching to landscape with well-behaved plants that don’t require much care. Modern landscapers crave seasonal color and demand benefits for local birds, butterflies and pollinators.
Here is one of the best compact shrubs that delivers big. A Proven Winners selection, Blue Muffin Viburnum (Viburnum dentatum \’Christom’) is a durable, beautiful choice. With a wonderfully compact growth habit, you can use it all over your yard as a foundation, screening, or filler plant.
In early to mid-summer, You’ll enjoy an abundance of beautiful, creamy white flower clusters on each of the branch tips in early summer. The blooms make a crisp visual contrast with the glossy green leaves. Butterflies adore these blooms and will come from all around to visit your landscape.
Blue Muffin suits both formal and informal landscapes. It holds its own in a manicured garden, with dark green summer leaves that are extraordinarily shiny. Held on very upright branches, the foliage cloaks the plant from top to bottom.
The flowers then develop into berries if another Viburnum dentatum is close by to pollinate it. The berries are green and then ripen into this intense blue color and seem to float above the foliage nicely. The berries are not edible to humans, but the birds and other wildlife love them.
As the season progresses, You’ll be thrilled by the impressive display of rich and intensely blue berries that inspired the name Blue Muffin. The fruit appears in late summer and fall, adding interest to the landscape and attracting songbirds. Use a few branches to bring indoors for wonderfully modern cut flower arrangements.
This dramatic blue fruit set is greatly improved if there is another variety of Arrowwood Viburnum in the area for cross-pollination. Look to Chicago Lustre, or Arrowwood Viburnum from us to use as a backdrop or taller screen.
The fall foliage can be a mix of yellow, vibrant red and deep purple in autumn, depending on where it is grown. With its well-balanced, upright branch structure, You’ll love the Blue Muffin Arrowwood all year-long even after the leaves drop and the birds pick the berries clean.
Our expert growers love Viburnum, and take delight in shipping very healthy, top-grade plants directly to your door. Order from us today!
How to Use Blue Muffin Arrowwood Viburnum in the Landscape
This right-sized shrub fits beautifully in modern landscapes. You can keep it pruned to any size, and it even grows very successfully in those enormous, outdoor containers.
Why not use a series of large containers along the length of your patio or pool deck? Coordinate with your home’s exterior and create a very stylish focal point with very little effort. Install drip irrigation to make it even easier for yourself.
Use one on either side of your front door as a wonderfully welcoming, natural display. Or, plant 3 feet apart on center to create a solid screen. You’ll measure from the center of one plant to the center of the next.
Use them as a low hedge along your foundation or line your side yard or driveway. It is an excellent plant that brings many desired ornamental features to your landscape.
Blue Muffin makes a great hedge or screening plant that the deer seem to leave alone. Easy-care, durable Blue Muffin shrubs are used in high-impact mass plantings in many commercial landscapes all across the Midwest.
Use a zig-zagging, staggered planting pattern to create a mass planting to fill wide open areas. Don’t forget to include a long row of their pollinator partners in your design. Mulch between plants and keep new mass plantings weeded until the plants grow together.
Create a backdrop of Blue Muffin Viburnum to showcase its excellent, dark, glossy foliage and colorful flower and fruit. Use this plant along the back of your perennial border or repeated across the midsection of your mixed shrub border.
Consider adding a few Blue Muffin shrubs in each of your garden beds. This designer trick easily unifies the entire landscape.
For a fabulous, easy care look, use several of our special Viburnum varieties in a mixed shrub border running the length of your back fence line. Mulch a 15 foot wide planting bed and use a series of loose triangles and curving lines. Use several plants of each variety and repeat their use along the length of the new planting. For the best results, use an odd number of plants in each group.
Pro Plant Tips for Care
Blue Muffin will perform best in full sun and well-drained soil. However, these rugged little beauties can tolerate partial shade and they will adapt well to a variety of soils after the plants are established in your landscape.
You won’t have to fuss or muss with these plants.
Remember that the flowers are borne on last year’s growth. Wait to prune until after the blooms are done in the spring. Time it carefully, or You’ll risk the blooms and fruit next year.
For the best looking hedge, grow it untrimmed on top. Renewal prune out the oldest, thickest stems every 3 years or so allowing the younger, thinner stems to flower and make fruit to enjoy.
Plant additional Arrowwood Viburnums (Viburnum dentatum) nearby to pollinate Blue Muffin or you will not see the fruit display. We offer several Arrowwood varieties.
In an average year that sees normal deer pressure and rainfall, this variety is both deer resistant and drought tolerant. But hungry deer may take a nibble, so we do always recommend using Deer Repellent Spray on all new plants and reapply according to the directions.
And we would also tell you to protect your investment in prolonged drought by giving supplemental water on a regular basis. Blue Muffin will perform best with medium moisture.
These are wonderful, hard-working, handsome shrubs, You’ll love using them throughout your garden design.