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| Photo Credit: David L. Morgan |
| This spectacular mock orange flowers every spring in my neighbor’s garden. |
Mock orange (sometimes called sweet mock orange) is a pretty shrub or small tree with fragrant, white flowers that appear in springtime and last until early summer. With their many yellow stamens, they might remind you of early blooming roses. But look again: These brilliant flowers have four petals and four sepals – quite distinctive on close inspection – and the leaves are oppositely placed on the stems. This isn’t a rose at all, but a lovely plant known as Philadelphus.
At one time, mock orange shrubs were among the most popular plants found in landscapes within USDA hardiness zones 4-8. That’s quite a large range, and considering that the plant adapts well to many soils, it’s surprising that we don’t see this beauty more frequently. (In my north Texas region, I’ve found only three plants, and two of them were in one very old landscape.) Even though mock oranges can still can be found and enjoyed in many botanical gardens that display old-fashioned landscape plants, home gardeners – and their landscapes – are missing out on a great plant! | Add Photo to Journal |  | | Photo Credit: Gerald L. Klingaman | | The yellow foliage of ‘Aureus’ mock orange makes a lovely backdrop to the showy flowers. |
Mock orange is a vigorous, easy-to-grow, drought-tolerant shrub – and it has few pest problems. So why haven’t we seen more of this pretty plant in the landscape? A likely reason for its ebb in popularity is its deciduous nature, as there are so many evergreen flowering shrubs available. Some consider mock orange to be a “single-season” plant. Yet there’s a place in the landscape for shrubs that flower once in the season – particularly when their flowers are as spectacular as those of Philadelphus and boast a hardiness range from the Deep South to the extreme far northern US!
With new cultivars coming out on the market, there’s surely a mock orange worth trying in your landscape. ‘Miniature Snowflake’, for example, is one that deserves your scrutiny. It’s a cultivar of P. x virginalis, and unlike some of the more lanky specimens, this one reaches only 3-4 feet tall and 1-2 feet wide. The plant is said to flower prolifically and fragrantly, bearing double flowers (meaning it has twice the number of petals as the species), so it has a fluffy appearance. And here’s some more good news about this beauty: It’s survived without winter damage as far north as Orono, ME!
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