Planting Dogwood Plants & Bare Root Dogwood

It is not until the winter month that our appreciation for both red and yellow stemmed dogwood is fully felt. The skyward reaching bright stems can glow under a mid-winter sun trickles down. The tall narrow stems can radiant and leave long stretching shadows across lawns, walls and flower beds

If you want to plant your own dogwood plants here are a few tips on what you need to do:
Choosing dogwood:  There are a number of varieties suitable for their brightly coloured stems:
Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’ – Red Stemmed Dogwood
Cornus stolonifera ‘Flaviramea’ – Yellow Stemmed Dogwood

Choosing a location: Both red & Yellow stemmed dogwood makes a good boundary and screening plants. Even though they are deciduous their thick mass of stems can offer good privacy. Dogwoods are suited to the back of borders and in places where they will have room to spread as they can grow up to 4m wide and 3m in height. Choose a spot that receives either the morning or evening sun in winter to get the best effects from the plant

Dogwoods are generally planted en mass. As they can be bought as bare root plants they can be got relatively cheaply and therefore a large number can be planted for maximum effect. However if you can patient you don’t need to plant many together as over time dogwoods will spread and even create even more plants as they spread and multiply underground
Planting dogwood: With any plant, ground preparation is essential for good growth and development. It is essential to dig over and loosen the soil where you intend to plant to allow for good root growth. All plants require at least 1 ½ depth of soil to ensure good growth and establish well

Two ways to plant red & yellow stemmed dogwood:

1. If you have the space and really want to commit an area of your garden to the red and yellow dogwood then you can plant a triple row of the plants. To do this space each row 1m apart. Plant one colour per row, spacing each plant in the row about 1m apart – you can vary this depending on how quickly you want your screen to form. This planting method will take up about a 5m wide planting strip of your garden but it will allow you to prune one row each year while allowing the other two rows to grow and provide interesting colour during the winter months. With this method you should prune back one row to ground level each year. When dogwood is pruned back like this it encourages stronger and healthier stems with good colour. Another nice idea here is to plant a number of white stemmed birch such as Betula Jacquemontii through the dogwood for added winter interest
2. If space is limited and you only want one or too dogwoods in your planting scheme them you could plant them towards the back of a border with other plants such as Azeleas, Leucothoe, Skimmias and Birch