Kaleidoscope Abelia
Abelia x grandiflora ‘Kaleidoscope’ · a dwarf gold-variegated abelia
A compact abelia grown for leaves that change all year: green and yellow in spring, gold in summer, fiery orange and red in fall. Fragrant white flowers carry on from late spring into fall. Colour is richest in full sun, and a spot out of winter wind keeps the stems from dying back.
- Mature size
- 2.5 × 3.5 ft
- 0.7 × 1.1 m, tall × wide
- Hardiness
- Zones 5a–9b
- USDA
- Sun
- Full sun to part shade
- Water
- Medium
- Blooms
- May–Sep
Kaleidoscope Abelia at its mature size
A mature Kaleidoscope Abelia grows 2 to 2.5 feet tall and 3 to 4 feet wide.
Drawn to scale beside a 5 ft 9 in person. With VeraScape, you see it at this size in your own yard.
Typical mature size, unpruned. Sources: Missouri Botanical Garden.
Through the year
What Kaleidoscope Abelia looks like month by month in a typical zone 6–7 garden.
Winter · Nov–Mar
Leaves flushed orange and red all over, no flowers.
In leaf · Apr–Oct
Small leaves variegated bright gold around green, some orange-blushed, a sprinkling of white flowers.
Growing Kaleidoscope Abelia
- Grows well in
- The Northeast, the Southeast, the Plains and Mountain West, and California.
- Good for
- Hedge, small space, foundation planting, specimen, slopes, deer resistant, and fragrant
- Leaves
- Drops its leaves in winter
- Native to
- China
Spacing for a hedge
VeraScape spaces plants so their grown canopies just touch. For Kaleidoscope Abelia, that’s about 3.5 ft apart, center to center.
Place a row in your own yard and VeraScape spaces them at their mature width, so you can see whether they’ll crowd the walk.
See Kaleidoscope Abelia in your yard before you dig
Visualize it at its true size, alongside the rest of your design.