Plant of the Month – March
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Pink Rockrose
Cistus x skanbergii
This sturdy favorite of cottage gardens offers a blanket of pink flowers in spring, cheering up any sunny space it fills.
- Plant Form: Evergreen Shrub
- Water Use: Low
- Mature Size: 3 – 4’ tall; 3 – 6’ wide
- Exposure: Full Sun
- Bloom Time: Peak bloom Spring; Summer –Fall (March – Sept)
- Native to: Greece
- Hardiness: Cold hardy to 15°F
A charmer in informal cottage gardens, this sturdy Mediterranean shrub is blanketed in spring with pale pink, one-inch flowers with yellow centers, offering a lighter smattering of flowers in summer and fall. This low-maintenance shrub tolerates heat, wind, drought, and poor soil, resists the advances of deer and rabbits, and requires only occasional irrigation after established. Pink Rockrose likes full sun and well-draining soil. Give a light, overall shearing or pinch off tips of young plants for thicker growth, pruning dead wood in early spring, but know that this shrub resents hard pruning. Useful as a dry-bank cover, informal screen, low divider, for erosion control on hillsides, along drives, massed by themselves, or planted among other shrubs. This very satisfying plant looks great alongside other shrubs like lavender, rosemary, sages, and buckwheats, and also works well in pots.
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