Southern arrowwood, a pollinator & bird-friendly, easy-to-grow shrub

The beautiful flower heads attract a wide array
of pollinators, including this yellow
tiger swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus).

Southern arrowwood (Viburnum dentatum) should be planted more often. It’s a medium-sized shrub that attracts pollinators with its flowers and feeds birds with its blue berries in the fall. It's also the larval host for the spring azure butterfly (Celastrina ladon).  This is a wonderful choice to add habitat to your landscape. (See my article on habitat gardening.) 

It grows well in a variety of conditions, from full sun to partial shade, and a variety of soil types. It does best along pond edges and low areas, including rain gardens, but not where it’s really dry. It's low maintenance, once established, but it tolerates trimming.

It can be planted as part of a hedgerow or as part of a grove or thicket around trees with other native shrubs. It tends to sucker and spread by rhizome, so plan for this.

Shrubs in the landscape

A newly renovated house in our neighborhood with its
newly-installed curb-appeal shrubs where there were none.

Shrubs as the default foundation plantings

Shrubs are easy for the builders to install and they give the landscape a "finished" and the expected look for a house.

Here's a house in our neighborhood that recently went on the market after extensive interior renovations according to its online listing. But what bothered me was that they removed two mature trees on the west side of the house, which cooled the area especially in the afternoon, removed the awnings on the windows, and then installed a row of useless, sprawling shrubs along the foundation. One of the trees may have been too close to the house, but the other one was fine. 

This was in 2022 when their azaleas were blooming. I was not
focused on the house, but the thickets.

I had taken a photo of this house in 2022 when their Japanese azaleas (Rhododendron japonicum), which are planted around some trees, were in bloom to include in my article, Habitat Gardening. The tree in the foreground is an old redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) next to the road, which is still there.

So the real problem with foundation shrubs is that they usually outgrow their spaces, some sooner than others. Sometimes it's just that they grow too tall, but other shrubs with aggressive spreading roots could also damage the building's foundation.