Compact American Cranberrybush (Viburnum trilobum ‘Alfredo) is a deciduous shrub with bright green foliage. Plant several for a dense screen or hedge along your property line. Your Compact American Cranberrybush has, as the name implies, a denser, more compact form, but still provides all the color and charm, and amazing cold hardiness you’ve come to expect of an American Cranberry.
Four-inch clusters of white, lace-cap flowers bob above the foliage in spring, a delicate welcome to the new season. Honeybees and pollinators adore these blooms and seek them out from near and far. Your Cranberry’s serrated, lobed leaves emerge red-hued but later transition to bright green for summer. They again change as fall approaches, turning to an appealing purple-red for autumn.
Compact Cranberry Bushes, like other Viburnums, are incredibly cold-hardy in USDA growing zones 2-7. It’s an assortment of 3-season color on one plant! As if all this wasn’t enough, clusters of red fruit ripen in fall, persisting into winter for even more ornamental interest. The fruit can be used for jellies, jams, chutneys, or simply eaten fresh. The birds and wildlife also enjoy them throughout the autumn and winter, feeding hungry wildlife through the fall and winter.
Planting and Application:
Easy to care for, it has a multi-stemmed, upright spreading habit, and fills out right to the ground, so you won’t need to couple it with facer plants. With optimal conditions, it can live up to 40 years! Even though birds and other wildlife will enjoy the dense foliage and fruit of your American Cranberry, more destructive wildlife, such as deer, tend to leave it alone.
Amazing flowers, edible fruit and 3-season foliage color make Compact American Cranberrybush a truly remarkable shrub for the home landscape. Add as a specimen to light up your home, or soften a corner planting and enliven your home’s foundation. Create a row of privacy between your front yard and the street, or as a screening division along your side and backyard to create garden rooms and seclusion.
- Lovely Clusters of White Blooms
- Spring Flowers & Fall Color
- Edible Fruit & Wildlife Interest
- Colorful Foliage & Fall Color
- Pollinators, Bird-Friendly, Screening, Specimen & Focal Point
Tips for Care:
American Cranberrybush is tolerant of soil types and will even thrive in urban pollution. Plant in any type of sun, from full sun to full shade, however, you’ll enjoy far larger flushes of flowers and fruit in full sun. Plant Viburnum into well-drained moist soil of about any kind, these are very adaptable and low-maintenance flowering shrubs!
Wait to prune until after those amazing flowers are finished in spring. It’s rare to need to tip prune, but you can shorten up the ends of branches right after flowering if you’d like. You can also skip tip pruning and renewal prune only if you wish to have fruit for birds. Renewal prune removes the largest, thickest stems from the ground every few years. This will rejuvenate your shrub. Leave the young stems in place, which will flower nicely for you next spring.
- Full Sun & Partial Shade & Full Shade
- Adaptable to Most Well-Drained Soil
- Easy Care – Prefers Moist Soil Types
- Deer Tend to Leave This Plant Alone – Juglone Tolerant
- Self-Pollinating, But Plant More Than One Trilobum for Best Berry Production
Colorful flowering ornamentals that change their wardrobe all growing season long and then even add interest to your winters, the Compact American Cranberry Bush will be the perfect shrub to add high-impact interest to your landscape without sacrificing space!
