Other Names:  Fire Erica; Red Hairy Heath

Description:

An excellent shrub with crimson red or white tubular flowers in early spring and light green needle-like foliage; ideal for poor soils, also great for massing in the garden; requires organic highly acidic soil, full sun and absolutely no standing water

Ornamental Features

Fire Heath is covered in stunning nodding crimson tubular flowers with creamy white overtones along the branches from late winter to mid spring, which emerge from distinctive creamy white flower buds. It has light green evergreen foliage. The tiny needles remain light green throughout the winter.

Landscape Attributes

Fire Heath is a multi-stemmed evergreen shrub with an upright spreading habit of growth. It lends an extremely fine and delicate texture to the landscape composition which can make it a great accent feature on this basis alone.

This is a relatively low maintenance shrub, and should only be pruned after flowering to avoid removing any of the current season's flowers. It is a good choice for attracting bees to your yard. It has no significant negative characteristics.

Fire Heath is recommended for the following landscape applications;

• Mass Planting
• General Garden Use
• Groundcover
• Naturalizing And Woodland Gardens

Planting & Growing

Fire Heath will grow to be about 4 feet tall at maturity, with a spread of 4 feet. It tends to fill out right to the ground and therefore doesn't necessarily require facer plants in front. It grows at a slow rate, and under ideal conditions can be expected to live for approximately 20 years.

This shrub should only be grown in full sunlight. It does best in average to evenly moist conditions, but will not tolerate standing water. It is very fussy about its soil conditions and must have rich, acidic soils to ensure success, and is subject to chlorosis (yellowing) of the foliage in alkaline soils. It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution. Consider applying a thick mulch around the root zone in winter to protect it in exposed locations or colder microclimates. This species is not originally from North America.