Arrowwood Viburnum

Size, growth and what to expect

Arrowwood viburnum makes an upright, rounded, many-stemmed shrub 5 to 10 feet tall and about as wide, and it can reach 15 feet in the best conditions. It grows at a medium pace, roughly a foot and a half a year in its youth on an average site, which is the rate our growth estimator uses for it.

Creamy white flowers, each a quarter inch across, open in flat-topped heads up to 4 inches wide in May and June. The blue-black fruit, about a quarter inch across, ripens from July into September, and songbirds, grouse, wild turkeys and squirrels take it. The shrub is exceedingly winter hardy, vigorous and reliable, and it suckers freely from the base.

It grows wild from Maine and Ohio south to northern Florida and west along the Gulf coast to eastern Texas, mostly on the coastal plain, along stream banks and in moist woods.

How to grow Arrowwood Viburnum

Arrowwood viburnum grows in full sun or part shade, or deeper shade with a thinner crop. It prefers moist loam but takes clay, sand, flooding, drought once established and road salt. Plants sucker into a clump, so space them 6 feet apart for a hedge.

Plant dormant bare-root or potted shrubs from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch ring clear of the stems. Pick fruit as soon as it turns blue-black, clean off the pulp and sow it a half inch deep in an outdoor bed under hardware cloth. Northern seed has double dormancy: the root grows in warm weather and the shoot waits for a winter, so most seedlings appear the second spring. A refrigerator alone will not do it. Stored seed is sown in spring to get a summer before its winter. Fruit picked just before it ripens and sown outdoors at once, in August, comes up the next spring. Indoors, northern seed needs 12 to 17 months damp at room temperature and then two to four weeks in the refrigerator.

Water weekly through the first summer if rain is short. Deer browse the twigs, so cage young plants where deer are heavy. Prune right after flowering, since next year's flowers form on old wood; a leggy clump can be cut to the ground in late winter.

Growth is medium. Seedlings can fruit in their third year and a group crops every year after, but one plant or one cultivar alone sets little fruit, so plant three or more together. Watch for the viburnum leaf beetle: larvae skeletonize leaves from beneath in May and June, adults chew holes in summer and eggs sit in straight rows under the new twigs. Prune out and bag those twigs after leaf drop, since two or three years of defoliation can kill a shrub.