This has been a very rewarding plant in my garden. It has been wonderful to watch the tiny shaggy blobs turn into big leafy shrubs that flower beautifully. This plant suckers and spreads.
 |
| 7/23/2015 - glorious rocket blooms |
They are out in full sun, which causes scorch on the big leaves in summer, but it also has encouraged fast growth and prolific flowering. They want moisture in the early years.
Yellow fall color. They don’t like drought even when mature. They don't need pruning but suckers can be cut if they wander too much. I haven't had to.
I planted tiny plants (1 gal. containers) from Nature Hills in late fall ‘07.
 |
| 7/3/2009 such little blobs |
By 2013 they made a real hedge, full and dramatic
 |
| 6/14/13 Fully leafed out but before blooming |
Although they were all labeled as species Aesculus parviflora when I got them from Nature Hills, one of the plants I got is different. I believe it is a later flowering cultivar, var. serotina. The second plant from the left consistently flowers a full two weeks later than the others.
 |
| 7/20/13 That shrub second from the left is a different cultivar! |
The later flowering variety looks the same but is reported to grow to 20 feet tall, rather than the 12 feet that the species grows. That's going to be a challenge.
 |
| 10/22/13 |
 |
| 7/29/14 -- still that one second from the left is the oddball |
 |
| 9/26/14 |
 |
| 10/28/14 the fall color really is clear yellow and gold |
 |
| 10/30/14 |
Their best season is mid July when rockets appear.
 |
| 7/21/2015 |
In 2015, with the hedge mature and full now, I could no longer stand that one mislabeled cultivar looking so different than the rest, so I took it out.
 |
| 7/28/2015 Driving me crazy -- one is not like the others |
I moved some suckers from the other shrubs into the empty pace where the big mislabeled bottlebrush buckeye had been, and in 2016 they had started to fill in the hole a bit.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Following are some bottlebrush buckeyes I have seen in other gardens.
This is a big stand of mature specimens at Wave Hill Garden in the Bronx in summer, 2010:
At Chanticleer there is a long running hedge just like mine, but more mature and quite a bit longer. Here it is in late June, spilling down a slope. What a sight:
