If you need to brighten up a shady area in your garden, just pop in a few white astilbe and watch as the white cloud like flowers light up your landscape. Gloria White is a tried and true vintage of astilbe that features floriferous cloud like blooms, dark emerald green foliage and a hardiness that gardeners love. This particular cultivar is a arendsii astilbe, which means it is hybridized from Japanese, Korea and Chinese astilbe to combine the best qualities of each. It is more drought tolerant that most pure strains and also will flower more profusely.

This astilbe is known for its luminous white blooms that appear as a pale green in early summer. However, its blooms are less like flowers than they are cloud formations or geometric works of art and astilbe can easily add striking texture to an ordinary garden. The white coloration is outstanding. It let's you live like Hermonie Granger and cast a the minor spell "Luminos" on your shade gardens and is an excellent platform to highlight other bright colored plants. In addition to being beautiful the flowers are also have a slight sweet fragrance and are pollinator friendly.

It can be difficult to find a beautiful plant that grows in both full sun or full shade. As someone with personal experience in a shady gardens I know its easy to tire of hostas, ferns, and more hostas. If you have shady areas and have not tried or heard of Astilbe, this may be the plant for you.

General care for any tree or shrub is easy, but like any living thing will require your attention. Please educate yourself and follow these simple rules.

Astilbe Gloria White - Astilbe x arendsii

Astilbe is most productive in rich soil high in organic matter and dappled sunlight. They can grown in full shade, but will not bloom prolifically. In a shady garden they can be successful if placed in an area that receives a periodic patches of sunlight through the day. Although they are relatively easy to grow, Astilbes can be water hogs. They are plants that must have consistently moist soil and grow well in areas that support ferns and hostas, where sunlight is present, but doesn't throughly dry the soil out. For this reason, they benefit greatly from mulching and regular organic matter added to the soil. Fertilization is best done with a slow release fertilizer spread in late February and prior to fertilization mulch or compost should be refreshed.