they root rather easily ...

ask him if you can pull down a couple branches... scar them.. little rooting hormone... and put a big rock on it...

and i bet by fall.. it will have rooted...

and you can have exact duplicates of his plant...

otherwise.. i seem to have them in anything but full sun.. and they do fine.. i dont know their names...

ken

Ken & Hortster, thanks for the advice. I appreciate it. I didn't think about asking my neighbor for some cuttings to root. Great idea, Ken! And, Hort, I will definitely check out A.W. I have some lavender mums right in front of where this spirea will be, so I'm hoping that combination will look sharp together.

Do you guys, or anyone else, know anything about Snowmound Spirea? Does it get huge, or will it stay within 4 feet tall and wide?

My Snowmounds "naturalized" at 5' high and 5-6' wide. Having a different branching structure than say, Vanhoutte, they actually could work as a trimmed hedge so they could be planted in a tight spot and trimmed to fit. However, after hitting maturity mine started dying back cane by cane until I jerked them out. Might have been bot canker.

Having said that, they were nice shrubs with that dense bluish green foliage and dependable bloom. Even got some orangey fall color a couple of times. I was sorry to see them go.

As a side note they were not far from a row of Vanhouttes and the Vanhouttes did not suffer the same malady.

hortster

Here is a photo of my neighbor's spirea. Can anyone ID it?

{{gwi:269799}}

By the way...the blooms, as you can tell, are all but spent. My neighbor doesn't dead-head them either. They were a light to medium pink color.

Goldflame? Goldmound? Magic Carpet? What color are the flowers when in bloom? That's the only way to tell. Looks too golden for Limemound.

hortster

I'd lean towards Magic Carpet or Goldflame. Do they have very intense burgundy spring foliage?

Magic Carpet is so common but its one of the best. Stays a bit more tidey and has very vibrant spring foliage.

I use to be a spirea nut, just because they where so easy to grow and adaptable to various soils, exposures and moisture.

Snowmound was by far the worst of them all. They are in my top 5 worst shrubs that can be grown in my area. They suffer from dieback and thin out.

Double Play Artist is probably my next favorite spirea. I thought I recall it being a superior variety over AW.

And my third is Tor Spirea.

All others are inferior in my opinion.

The foliage stays the same color as you see it now. The flowers are light to medium pink.

Some kind of "Mound" I don't remember the name, but I have 2 of them. Bought them last year on clearance for about 3 bucks each in 1.5 gallon pots. They are hard little rascals. Overwintered and have been blooming for months now. They are planted in partial shade and one is in the vicinity of the dreaded maple tree. You can't lose with these shrubs. Check your Lowes in a few weeks. They should be clearancing out shrubs soon.

If the initial spring push is not reddish it would be something like Limemound

The foliage emerges golden when the plant breaks dormancy and remains gold until it goes dormant again. Like I said, the foliage you see in the photo is the foliage color the entire growing season and the flowers are light to medium pink in flat-top clusters all over the plant.

Emerging and staying gold sounds like Gold Mound. I had one, but the color was too bright for me right next to my red Japanese maple. I tossed it over our cliff, and it is still living and even flowering a year later. Can't kill it. As Ken said, if you place a rock over a low branch and nick the bottom of that branch just below a leaf node, you will have a rooted branch next spring. If your neighbor doesn't prune much, some of the lower branches may have already sprouted roots.

This looks and sounds exactly like my Goldmound.

Snowmound spirea is one of the older ones and is very susceptible to fireblight. I lost three of them two years ago to fireblight. I loved them, but I won't plant them again. Our extension agent told me to plant something else in the spot where we removed them.

Just out of curiosity, I noticed that there are at least three different species of spirea, Spirea x bumalda, Spirea japonica, & Spirea nipponica (examples below). What is the difference between these three species, and is 'Snowmound' susceptible to fire blight because of its nipponica species? Is one more heat and drought tolerant than the others, and is one more tolerant of shade? IâÂÂm just curious.

Examples:
Spirea x bumalda 'Froebelli'
Spirea japonica 'Goldmound'
Spirea nipponica 'Snowmound'

Good questsion, plantingman, but I have always assumed (I know, I know) that the Snowmound and Bridal Veil type of old fashioned spireas were more susceptible because they have been around for so long and newer cultivars were developed to resist fire blight.