Glow Girl® Spirea

This compact, colorful small shrub is a staff favorite here at Nature Hills. With “glowing” color all season long, the Glow Girl® Spirea (Spiraea betulifolia ‘Tor Gold’) is very attractive and brings butterflies and hummingbirds to your landscape. You’ll love this easy care plant!

Glow Girl is native to North America, but is a hardier selection that is adapted to extremes of cold and heat. Its beautiful, Birch-shaped leaves won’t burn in the heat of the summer.

With a full, compact habit, Glow Girl brings exceptional ornamental features all through the growing season. It delivers color from spring through fall.

The color show begins in early spring when vibrant, sunny-yellow, new foliage emerges. It will gradually turn lime-green.

Keep your eyes out for tender, tiny, green clustered flower buds that swell and turn purple before opening into long-lasting blooms of pristine white. They are the sweetest little powder puffs, decorated with delicate yellow stamens!

The flowers keep blooming for you all spring long—and even into early summer— if you spend just a minute snipping off the first flush of spent blossoms. Call it “me time”, it’s well worth that small effort spent enjoying your garden.

As summer progresses, the lime-green foliage deepens into an elegant golden tone. Finally, as the nights grow colder, the fall color display occurs. The shrub turns a brilliant mix of chartreuse with bold orange and even bright red.

Glow Girl keeps changing and evolving for you all season long. It might be hard to decide which “outfit” you love the most. The ornamental qualities of this small shrub truly can’t be understated.

Glow Girl Spirea will grow into a useful, mounded shape with an equal height and spread. It has a compact form that works so well on small modern lots. It can even be grown in outdoor containers as a “Thriller” on the balcony, porch, patio or deck.

Order yours today from the expert growers of Nature Hills. How nice to receive your gorgeous new Glow Girl Spirea shrubs packed in a very sturdy box right at your doorstep.

How to Use Glow Girl® Spirea in the Landscape

When a deciduous shrub offers this much color and remains compact and low-growing, it can be placed throughout your landscape. Use Glow Girl as a consistent design element. Plant several in every planting bed around your landscape to easily tie your landscape design together.

These make perfect, colorful, low-growing hedges along your sidewalk or edging your flower bed. Create a solid hedge by planting 2 feet apart on center. You’ll measure from the center of one to the center of the next.

Glow Girl can also be used as a filler plant to brighten up wide, open spaces. Use a staggered, zig-zagging planting pattern, 2 feet apart on center. Mulch between plants and keep new mass plantings weeded until the plants grow together and touch.

You can also consider it a bedding plant and use it in the middle of rectangular planting beds. Edge with small Baby Gem Boxwood for a formal look.

Because this shrub is very low maintenance, it should be considered for use in commercial landscapes. Go big and bold with this brightly colored shrub to grab attention.

Plant them in large outdoor containers for a dramatic look. Then place one on either side of your front door for a big shot of curb appeal. Decorate your pool deck or back patio with these easy-breezy splashes of color.

Style them in sophisticated containers that match your home’s exterior or go wild with fun and funky pots! Glow Girl can handle a “whole lotta look”, so don’t take your choices too seriously. Life is short!

As you can imagine, this wonderful bright foliage makes a perfect foil for dark purple plants. Alternate with Crimson Pygmy Barberry along the length of a garden bed, or use as a small facer shrub on the sunny side of taller Diabolo Ninebark.

Pollinators and other beneficial insects will appreciate Glow Girl’s early season flowers as much as you will. If you have an edible garden, mix in a few near your vegetable garden or fruit trees to entice pollinators and to help control pests.

You’ll just love the look! Go ahead, start a collection.

#ProPlantTips for Care

This versatile shrub is quite hardy and can adapt to a variety of soils. Butterflies and birds love its flowers, but deer tend to pass it by.

In warmer climates, plant in a location with part shade, favoring protection from the afternoon sun. Northern gardeners can plant in a full sun position.

Select a location with well-drained soil. Glow Girl Spiraea adapts very well to many different soil types.

Give new plants and container plants a moderate amount of water on a regular basis. However, Spireas are low water users, once their roots are established in your soil.

In the warmer Zones of 8 and 9, extra water may be required during dry hot periods. In these areas, this plant will benefit from a 3 to 4-inch layer of mulch to keep the root system cool and minimize surface moisture evaporation.

Glow Girl flowers on old wood so any major pruning should be done right after spring flowering has finished. Snip the fading blooms to prolong the flowering season, a minor task that rewards you greatly.

There are no serious disease or pest problems that bother the Glow Girl. This is a great plant for focal points or fillers in commercial plantings.

If you’re looking for a tough little shrub that won’t require much care, and yet provide color for your yard in three seasons, Glow Girl Spirea is a great choice as a variable and lively dash of color spring through fall. Enjoy those enchanting spring flowers!

Plant yours this year and begin enjoying the grace and color of this remarkable shrub. Order now!