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Other Names:  Spring Heath, Snow Heath, Winter Heath

Description:

A popular and showy groundcover for poor, acid soils, with magenta-red flowers in early spring on deep green foliage; requires organic highly acidic soil, full sun and absolutely no standing water

Ornamental Features

Porter's Red Heath is blanketed in stunning spikes of red bell-shaped flowers rising above the foliage from late winter to mid spring. It has dark green evergreen foliage. The tiny needles remain dark green throughout the winter.

Landscape Attributes

Porter's Red Heath is a multi-stemmed evergreen shrub with a mounded form. It lends an extremely fine and delicate texture to the landscape composition which should be used to full effect.

This is a relatively low maintenance shrub, and should only be pruned after flowering to avoid removing any of the current season's flowers. It is a good choice for attracting bees to your yard. It has no significant negative characteristics.

Porter's Red Heath is recommended for the following landscape applications;

• Mass Planting
• General Garden Use
• Groundcover
• Naturalizing And Woodland Gardens

Planting & Growing

Porter's Red Heath will grow to be about 8 inches tall at maturity extending to 12 inches tall with the flowers, with a spread of 24 inches. It tends to fill out right to the ground and therefore doesn't necessarily require facer plants in front. It grows at a slow rate, and under ideal conditions can be expected to live for approximately 20 years.

This shrub should only be grown in full sunlight. It does best in average to evenly moist conditions, but will not tolerate standing water. It is very fussy about its soil conditions and must have rich, acidic soils to ensure success, and is subject to chlorosis (yellowing) of the foliage in alkaline soils. It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution. Consider covering it with a thick layer of mulch in winter to protect it in exposed locations or colder microclimates. This is a selected variety of a species not originally from North America.