Mountain Laurel Growing: Care Of Mountain Laurel In The Landscape

If you have typical Brooklyn clay soil in your garden, you’ll want to create a nurturing environment for mountain laurel by improving drainage and nutrient content with organic matter such as compost. This shrub needs its shallow roots to stay cool, so mulch and keep your plant well-watered, especially during very hot, dry weather. An organic fertilizer like Holly-Tone, which is formulated for acid-loving plants, can be applied in the spring to enhance flower production.

Mountain Laurel: A Shade-Tolerant Native With Beautiful Blossoms

When it comes to spectacular flowers, most city gardeners have limited choices. The narrow plots typically found behind most brownstones and row houses get little light due to neighboring trees and adjacent buildings, so using showy plants that require hours of full sun is not realistic.

One often overlooked option is mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia). This shade-tolerant North American shrub has gorgeous flowers that bloom in late spring and early summer. A close relative of rhododendrons and azaleas, it’s an excellent choice for a shady garden. It’s also evergreen, so even after the blooms have faded, its leathery deep green foliage provides a welcome sign of life. Even in the coldest winter weather, when rhododendron leaves have curled in on themselves, mountain laurel remains bravely open to the elements.

Why Is It So Special?

In addition to being tolerant of shade, Kalmia latifolia produces exquisite clusters of delicate, fused-petal blossoms that resemble tiny origami rice bowls. When the buds burst open in May or June, the branches are virtually obscured by blooms. They can range from white to pink to deep rose and are distinctively tattooed with symmetrical maroon or purple dots or streaks. The bell-like flowers have a very unusual way of dispensing pollen. Their stamens are arched, with the tips held under the rim of the bell. When a bee or other pollinator lands on the flower, the weight of the insect releases the stamen, which flings up the pollen like a catapult.

Cultivation

Mountain laurel is a member of the heath or heather family, Ericaceae. This family includes rhododendrons, azaleas, blueberries, and cranberries, all of which are woody shrubs that thrive in moist, well-drained acidic soil. Mountain laurel will grow in USDA Zones 5 to 9 in deep shade to full sun, but it does best in moderate to partial shade. In deep shade it won’t produce as many flowers and can become spindly. Too-bright sun can cause scorching of the leaves.

If you have typical Brooklyn clay soil in your garden, you’ll want to create a nurturing environment for mountain laurel by improving drainage and nutrient content with organic matter such as compost. This shrub needs its shallow roots to stay cool, so mulch and keep your plant well-watered, especially during very hot, dry weather. An organic fertilizer like Holly-Tone, which is formulated for acid-loving plants, can be applied in the spring to enhance flower production.

Maintenance

An individual mountain laurel shrub can produce thousands of seeds annually. It’s a good idea to pinch off spent flowers so the plant can put its energy into next year’s blooms instead of reproduction. Deadheading also helps to prevent legginess. Mountain laurel is slow growing, and at maturity, it averages 6 to 15 feet in height and width; dwarf cultivars top out at 3 to 4 feet.

Although mountain laurel in the wild has been known to reach heights of 20 to 40 feet, there’s usually little need for pruning. If your plant is growing too tall for your garden, it will survive hard pruning—even to a few inches above the ground—in the late winter or early spring. Given proper growing conditions, mountain laurel requires little maintenance beyond regular watering, but it can still sometimes fall victim to common garden ills such as blights, borers, scale, white fly, and lace bugs.

A word of caution, especially if your garden is visited by children or pets. All parts of Kalmia latifolia are poisonous if ingested and can cause severe digestive upset and other alarming, though usually nonfatal, symptoms such as weakness and paralysis. Not all animals are affected—deer, unfortunately, are apparently immune to any ill effects and can be vigorous consumers of mountain laurel foliage.

Where to Find Mountain Laurel

Mountain laurel was first recorded growing in the wild in 1624 and can be found on rocky ridges and mountainous forest areas as far south as the Florida Panhandle, as far north as southern Quebec, and as far west as Indiana and Louisiana. In spring it can be seen blooming abundantly along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and, closer to New York City, in the forests of upstate New York, notably near Lake Minnewaska, in Ulster County. It is the state flower of both Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

Mountain laurel is also part of the amazing flower display that takes place at Brooklyn Botanic Garden every spring and can be found in the Discovery Garden, Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, and Native Flora Garden.

Retail Nurseries

Rarefind Nursery
957 Patterson Road
Jackson, New Jersey 08527
732-833-0613
www.rarefindnursery.com

Broken Arrow Nursery
13 Broken Arrow Road
Hamden, Connecticut 06518
203-288-1026
www.brokenarrownursery.com

Wayside Gardens
One Garden Lane
Hodges, South Carolina 29653
800-845-1124
www.waysidegardens.com

White Flower Farm
PO Box 50, Route 63
Litchfield, Connecticut 06759
800-503-9624
www.whiteflowerfarm.com

Wholesale Nurseries

Pleasant Run Nursery
93 Ellisdale Road
PO Box 247
Allentown, New Jersey 08501
609-259-8585
www.pleasantrunnursery.com

Bissett Nursery
323 Long Island Avenue
Holtsville, New York 11742
631-289-3500
www.bissettnursery.com

Wholesale and Retail

Barton Nurseries
Main Office
949 New Durham Road
Edison, New Jersey 08817
732-287-5222
www.bartonnurseries.com

Jeanne Rostaing contributed to BBG’s Japanese-Style Gardens handbook and writes frequently for Gardenista.

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Mountain Laurel Growing: Care Of Mountain Laurel In The Landscape

Grown for its showy late spring and summer flowers and attractive, evergreen foliage, mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia, USDA zones 5 through 9) is a colorful asset to borders and foundation plantings, and it looks fantastic in mass plantings. It’s sometimes called a calico bush because the pink or white flowers usually have dark pink or maroon markings. Native to the eastern U.S., you can often find mountain laurel growing wild among native azaleas and rhododendrons.

Mountain Laurel Information

You’ll find many lovely cultivars of mountain laurel to choose from, thanks in large part to Dr. Richard A. Jaynes of Hamden, Connecticut. Here are just a few of his enticing creations:

• ‘Elf’ is a dwarf that grows 3 feet (1 m.) tall with pale pink or white blossoms.
• ‘Heart of Fire’ has deep red buds that open to pink flowers with dark pink edges on a 5 foot (1.5 m.) shrub.
• ‘Raspberry Glow’ grows up to 6 feet (2 m.) tall. The burgundy buds open to raspberry pink flowers that keep their color when grown in shade.
• ‘Carol’ forms a low, rounded mound of dark green foliage. The buds are red and the flowers are bright white.
• ‘Snowdrift’ has white blooms with a dab of red in the center. It grows about 4 feet (1 m.) tall.

How to Grow a Mountain Laurel

Mountain laurel looks best when grown in dappled sunlight, but it also grows well in full sun or partial shade. Avoid locations with full sun in combination with reflected light from heat-reflecting southern or southwestern walls. Partial shade is best in hot, southern climates. In deep shade the flowers lose their bright colors and may develop leaf spot.

If azaleas and rhododendrons grow well in the area, mountain laurel will thrive. The shrubs need moist but well-drained, acidic soil. They won’t grow well in clay soil. It’s important not to give the shrubs too much fertilizer, so don’t plant them in or near lawns fed with high-nitrogen products.

Care of Mountain Laurel

Amend the soil with compost when planting mountain laurels. If you have several shrubs, amend the entire bed. Add the compost to the fill dirt if you are only planting one or two shrubs. When adding organic matter to the fill dirt, dig the hole as deep as the root ball and three times as wide so the shrub will have plenty of organic soil where it can spread its roots.

Mountain laurel has a shallow root system and needs watering more often than most shrubs. New plantings need 2 inches (5 cm.) of water each week for the first season. The average sprinkler system delivers about an inch (2.5 cm.) of water per hour, so you’ll need to run the system two hours. Use organic mulch, such as pine needles or shredded bark, to help the soil hold moisture between waterings.

These shrubs don’t need a lot of fertilizer and may bloom poorly if you apply too much. Use a fertilizer designed for acid-loving plants mixed at one-quarter strength once a year in spring. You can also add a thin layer of compost to the soil for additional nutrients and to add to the organic matter of the soil.

Mountain laurel begins forming the buds for next year’s flowers soon after the flowers fade. Prune the shrub right after flowering so that you don’t remove the new buds. Cut off faded flowers promptly so the shrub can focus its energy on growth rather than seed development.