Summersweet
Clethra alnifolia
A native shrub prized for spikes of sweetly fragrant white flowers in late summer, when few shrubs bloom, crowded by bees and butterflies. It's one of the rare flowering shrubs for shade, and it thrives in wet, acid soil by ponds and streams. It struggles on a hot, dry site, so keep it moist.
- Mature size
- 5.5 × 5 ft
- 1.7 × 1.5 m, tall × wide
- Hardiness
- Zones 3a–9b
- USDA
- Sun
- Full sun to part shade
- Water
- Medium to wet
- Blooms
- Jul–Aug
Summersweet at its mature size
A mature Summersweet grows 3 to 8 feet tall and 4 to 6 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 Summersweet looks like month by month in a typical zone 6–7 garden.
Dormant · Dec–Apr
Bare upright stems with dry brown seed spikes; leafs out late.
In leaf · May–Jun, Sep
Dense glossy dark green leaves, no flowers.
In flower · Jul–Aug
Upright narrow spikes of white flowers at every branch tip.
Fall · Oct–Nov
Yellow to golden-brown, moderate, often uneven.
Photos
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Growing Summersweet
- Grows well in
- The Northeast, the Southeast, and the Midwest.
- Growth rate
- Medium
- Good for
- Small space, foundation planting, specimen, rain garden, deer resistant, pollinators, and fragrant
- Leaves
- Drops its leaves in winter
- Native to
- Eastern and Southern North America
Spacing
VeraScape spaces plants so their grown canopies just touch. For Summersweet, that’s about 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 Summersweet in your yard before you dig
Visualize it at its true size, alongside the rest of your design.
Other summersweets
Hummingbird Summersweet
SummersweetAll drawn to the same scale.