Blackhaw viburnum is a wonderful native plant with many useful qualities and deserving of a place in your garden.   It is an excellent ornamental with beautiful fragrant white flower clusters in the spring, attractive dense, dark green leathery summer foliage that is not bothered by pests or diseases, black berry clusters in mid-late summer, and red fall foliage colors.  The new branchlets are red at first, then green, then finally dark brown tinged with red.  While blackhaw can reach 15’ tall and 6-8' wide, they can be kept much smaller, say 5-6’ tall, with annual pruning and periodic removal of the older branches.  Viburnums are tough!  In my opinion, Blackhaw is a much underutilized, durable native landscape plant worthy of much more extensive use in our landscapes as either a tree or a shrub.  It is widely soil tolerant, though it prefers well drained soil.  Once established, it can be quite drought tolerant.   In its native habitat, Blackhaw prefers sunny woodland with well drained soil and adequate water, however it will do fine in full sun to part shade in a home landscape.  I’d use it for a large shrub or small tree around foundation plantings, for dense privacy hedging, in mixed shrub borders, along a woodland edge, or as a forest understory species.  It provides a great wildlife food source as well as providing habitat for nesting birds.

 

Blackhaw fruit is produced as abundant clusters of black berries.  They can be somewhat sweet when fully ripe, but are best used for juice, wine, cooking and preserves.  Though I’ve seen no nutritional analysis of the fruit, just its color lets me know that it is loaded with anthocyanins, which are potent anti-oxidants and have wonderful healing and health promoting effects.   I suspect it should have superfood status similar to Aronia melanocarpa.

 

 

 

 

July 23-25, NC Herb Association Wild Herb Weekend, Valle Crucis, NC click here.

 

This month the Chuckster addresses summertime planting, pruning, fertilization and summer insects.

 

 

 

 

 

I live on the second floor of a passive solar-designed house at Earthaven Ecovillage. In the summer I keep my doors and windows open all night long to let in the cool air and then close everything up in the morning to shut out the coming heat.

 

This morning before the shut down, I sat on my yoga mat in front of the doors, which look south, out over our herb garden and hillside pasture.

 

Right about eye level is a nest box hosting a bluebird family. I watch the parents fly back and forth over and over bringing food. One leaves and the other comes. They perch nearby waiting. On the elder bush, on the fence, on the porch railing, on the roof. When one of the parents sticks their head into the nest box opening the baby birds make a chorus of noise. I can still hear it as I write this, 50 feet away at the computer. Once the parent leaves, the chorus quiets. This continues all day.

 

We’re lucky to have bluebirds here, as they are now returning more strongly to the Southeast, coming back from a significant decline, which by the 1970’s left them at 30% of their former numbers.

 

Bluebirds will nest in human-made nest boxes and may come back year after year to the same site. They dine mostly on insects but will eat fruits and berries. You can enhance bluebird habitat by planting certain shrubs in your yard. The shrubs provide protection, shade, and food for the birds. Some suggestions: dogwoods, sumacs, honeysuckle, raspberry, blackberry, serviceberry, inkberry, hollies, mulberry, and viburnums.