Pagoda dogwood
* Common name: Pagoda dogwood
Fruits forming on pagoda dogwood.
* Botanical name: Cornus alternifolia
* What it is: A small native tree with a layered branching habit, creamy-white and mildly fragrant umbrella-shaped flower clusters, bluish-black late-summer pea-sized fruits, and reddish-purple fall foliage. Grows naturally as a multi-stem plant but can be pruned to a single trunk. Golden Shadows is an excellent pagoda dogwood variety with green-gold variegated leaves.
* Size: About 20 feet tall and 25 feet wide.
* Where to use: Prefers afternoon shade or dappled-light locations (avoid hot, sunny spots) and so makes a nice specimen off a northern or eastern house corner. Also excellent as an under-story tree (under taller trees) or planted along a woodland edge. Like most dogwoods, pagoda dogwood prefers moist, acidy, well-drained soil.
Pagoda dogwood Golden Shadows
* Care: Keep soil consistently moist the first two seasons, then soak well every few weeks in hot, dry weather. Prune out any dead wood or competing trunks and crossing branches at end of winter; otherwise, no pruning needed so long as you’ve allowed adequate space. Remove competing trunks when young if you want a single trunk instead of multiple ones. Scatter a balanced, acidifying, organic fertilizer over the ground each spring for the first few years, then fertilizer usually not needed.
* Great partner: Crested iris or Allegheny spurge are good native groundcovers that like similar shaded, acidy conditions. Sweet woodruff, Lenten rose and barrenwort are good non-native groundcover choices. Russian cypress or spreading English yew ‘Repandens’ make a good, low evergreen underplanting.