Escallonia Iveyi

Escallonia 'Iveyi' is a beautiful bush with gracefully arched branches that highlight its generous, long and pleasantly scented flowering. Perfectly adapted to coastal conditions, it tolerates wind, spray, and summer drought. This vigorous hybrid, widely used as an evergreen hedge, also has a lot of charm in a shrub border. It can be grown in containers, which allows it to be overwintered in cold regions. 

Escallonia 'Iveyi' was discovered in around 1920 in Great Britain by a gardener named Ivey at Caerhays Castle Garden (Cornwall). It is a cross between Escallonia 'Exoniensis' and E. bifida. The plant, which grows fairly quickly, forms a well-branched, overall rounded bush, which will not exceed 3 m (9.8 ft) in height (about 2 m (6.6 ft) in all directions at the age of 10). Its arching branches bear small evergreen leaves in winter, 4 cm (1.6 in) in length. The leaves are leathery, ovate, toothed, and a shiny dark green. Flowering occurs in June-July, and then again in September. It takes the form of pyramid-shaped panicles, about 12 cm (4.7 in) long. Each panicle is composed of numerous white tubular corollas with a yellowish-green centre. The flowers emit a sweet fragrance that attracts bees and butterflies.

Escallonia 'Iveyi', an excellent evergreen hedge bush, only fears excessively chalky soils, icy winds, and cold winters. In a hedge, it replaces conifers advantageously with its long-lasting flowering, decorative evergreen foliage, and rapid growth. It can be combined with many other shrubs (evergreen ceanothus, Elaeagnus, bay laurel, olearias), thus promoting biodiversity in the garden. It is essential in coastal gardens, as its flowering brightens the foliage of Atriplex and Japanese spindle trees, for example.