Blue Muffin^® Arrowwood Viburnum Viburnum dentatum

Chicago lustre is not blooming with blue muffin for me in zone 6. Autumn jazz is a good match.

I planted two Blue Muffin in 3/4 day sun and average soil 7 years ago. They have grown to about 10’ tall by 6’ wide. They flower heavily every year and produce thousands of berries for the songbirds. I use Viburnum ‘Little Joe’ for cross-pollination. It blooms at the same time as Blue Muffin. I do have to spray deer repellant to keep the deer from nibbling. Great pollinator plant too!

I've since become a native plant purist for the most part and avoid cultivars. Insects and birds are best adapted to native forms. I purchased three of these before becoming aware of plant stuff though in order to conceal the underside of our deck. Then I heard I won't get fruit unless there are other arrowoods around as these are all grafted from the same self-infertile plants. Great. My fault for not knowing that at the time of purchase. This is the kind of thing I'm aware of nowadays though. And last year after installing them, sure enough we had no berries. Blah, I bought this partially so it could have wildlife value. Then this year happened and all three are *loaded* with berries. Each of the three plants has 15-20 clusters of fruit which are visually striking and will provide food for birds this fall and winter. I'm not sure how it happened. I've been all through the woods near me and seen none growing wild. My best guess is that someone else around must have arrowoods. I'll be going to a native plant store just in case though to put a few along our woods to give a better shot at cross-pollination. Cool plant.

The fruit is Blue Muffin's big selling point but, as others have noted, it needs to be co-planted with a different dentatum variety that blooms at the same time. From all reports, dreamii and Chicago Lustre don't bloom at the same time. It's a pity that Proven Winners does not sell a good pollinator such as Little Joe. My Blue Muffin is a nice enough shrub, but the absence of berries makes it just another viburnum bush.

We have one plant in the front of our home.....we love it!!!!! Just removed a ton of Bamboo in our backyard that was a great screen....thinking about buying lots of these plants to replace the bamboo.