Festivus Gold® Ninebark

Where to Plant

• Sunlight: Plant your Festivus Gold in a location that receives a minimum of six hours of direct sunlight daily, which is key to maintaining its brilliant yellow foliage color. While it tolerates partial shade, expect the leaf color to shift to a duller lime green, reducing its vibrant garden presence.
• Soil: This shrub is highly adaptable, thriving in average to slightly moist soil, including heavy clay or sandy loam. If you have extremely dense clay, work in generous amounts of compost before planting to ensure good drainage, as ninebark dislikes perpetually soggy roots.

Watering Requirements

For the first growing season, keep the root zone consistently moist but not saturated to ensure a strong establishment of the root system. Once mature, your Ninebark is quite drought tolerant, needing supplemental water only during prolonged dry spells. Inconsistent watering will certainly lead to stress and result in duller foliage and smaller, less impressive bloom clusters.

Pruning Tips

Festivus Gold Ninebark flowers exclusively on old wood, meaning the buds for next spring's blooms are set the previous year. To maximize flowering, perform any major shaping or renewal pruning immediately after the spring blooms fade. The best technique is to remove up to one third of the oldest, thickest stems right down to the ground, which stimulates new, colorful basal growth and improves air circulation in the center of the shrub.

Fertilizer Needs

Ninebarks are tough and low feeders; in average garden soil, a simple topdressing of well-aged compost in early spring is often sufficient. If your soil is poor, apply a balanced, granular slow release fertilizer, like a 10-10-10, just as new growth begins. What to avoid: Never fertilize after midsummer, as this promotes tender new growth that cannot properly harden off before winter frost sets in.