Viburnum Plicatum Watanabe - Japanese Snowball Watanabe

Viburnum Plicatum Watanabe is a deciduous flowering shrub with tiered branches and white lace-cap flowers. It suits low maintenance wildlife-friendly borders.

Viburnum Plicatum Watanabe is native to Eastern Asia and is commonly known as Japanese Snowball Watanabe. It was found in Japan as a seedling in the wild by Mr Wanatabe in the 1950s and has been popular ever since for its distinctive branching habit. 

Japanese Snowball Watanabe is slow-growing with compact, dense branches that form tiers as it matures and its eventual shape is similar to Cornus Alternifolia Argentea.  Each branch has deeply veined ovate foliage that appears pale green in spring before maturing to deep green and eventually shades of bronze and red for glowing autumn colour.

In spring its distinctive flowers emerge in flat clusters of tiny white flowers which give it the name ‘snowball’. Its flowers are long-lasting and smother the shrub from spring right through until early autumn when they mature to small red-black fruits. Its synonym Viburnum Plicatum Nanum Semperflorens is Latin - semperflorens meaning ‘always flower’.

This is a great choice of deciduous flowering shrub for wildlife-friendly low-maintenance gardens.

Height And Spread of Viburnum Plicatum Watanabe
Japanese Snowball Watanabe will reach approximately 2-3 metres in height and spread over 10-20 years.  

How Hardy Is Viburnum Plicatum Watanabe
Viburnum is a hardy species and Watanabe is no exception. It will tolerate the coldest winters in an exposed position if its roots are well-drained and it copes with hot sun too.

How To use Viburnum Plicatum Watanabe
Japanese Snowball Watanabe is a good choice for the back of a border where it covers a fence or wall and provides a flowering backdrop for shorter flowering shrubs matching particularly well with other plicatum varieties such as Viburnum Plicatum Popcorn.
Its simple snowball flowers enhance a cottage style garden and its tiered structure is suitable for more modern spaces too, such as an urban courtyard in need of green height.

If you enjoy a maintenance-free garden that still has lots of colour and flowers then Watanabe will suit your outdoor space.

How To Care For Viburnum Plicatum Watanabe
This is an easy-to-grow shrub that requires little care once established. It will grow in the majority of well-drained soils in sheltered or exposed positions and enjoys full sun to part shade.
Pruning isn’t required and may damage the shape of the shrub’s naturally tiered branches but you can remove any wayward or damaged branches in winter.
Water it well until established and apply a thick layer of organic matter to its roots in early spring to enhance the flower display.

More about Viburnum on our blog post.