Blush Pink™ Nandina Shrub

A Dwarf Nandina with Year-Round Multicolored Foliage

Solid-green shrubs have their place in the landscape, but a monochromatic design scheme just isn’t very exciting. And it certainly doesn’t set your yard apart from all your neighbors’ yards. You don’t have to settle for basic green when you make the simple addition of a colorful shrub ‘– Blush Pink™ Nandina (Nandina domestica ‘Aka’ BLUSH PINK™). No matter what season of the year, this plant will add color to your yard ‘– not with flowers, but with its foliage!

Pink-Tipped New Growth
Blush Pink™ Nandina wakes up a green landscape in spring with its brilliant pink foliage. With a nod to its common name, the color is a delightful shade of blush pink, which is splashed across the new growth that emerges in springtime. The contrast between the mature leaves, which are a rich shade of green, and the new pink leaves, is striking. Unlike other plants, with contrasting new growth that quickly fades to green, Blush Pink ™ Nandina’s pink leaves persist throughout the growing season. From spring through fall, these green shrubs are topped with pink leaves!

Vibrant Red Fall Color
A second colorful show begins in autumn when Blush Pink™ Nandina turns a deep shade of purplish-red and retains this vivid color throughout fall and winter. You know how drab winter landscapes can be, but just imagine how colorful your yard and garden will be when you grow Blush Pink™ Nandina shrubs. Place these resplendent plants where they’ll shine in the winter landscape to breathe color to an otherwise lackluster area.

Never Needs Pruning
Blush Pink™ Nandina doesn’t need pruning to keep its compact shape, and it doesn’t need shearing to produce a flush of pink leaves in springtime. Classified as a dwarf nandina (other nandina species can reach 8 feet tall), Blush Pink™ maintains a neat and tidy form by growing only 2 feet tall and wide. This shrub is ready to go in your garden ‘– you just need to plant it and let it grow!

Non-Invasive Growth
Many types of nandina shrubs have deservedly gotten a bad rap in recent years because of their invasive nature. If you’ve ever seen a nandina with red berries, you’ve seen the reason for its prolific growth, which can pop up in unintended areas of your landscape. Birds love these berries, but the berries contain seeds that become distributed over a large area as they pass through a bird’s digestive tract. The seeds easily sprout where they’re deposited, and they quickly grow into nandina plants. But Blush Pink ™ Nandina doesn’t produce berries ‘– it’s bred that way ‘– so it will not become an unwelcome and invasive plant in your landscape (or your neighbor’s yard)!

Insect- and Disease-Resistant
If all your landscape plants could be as insect- and disease-resistant as Blush Pink™ Nandina, you’d be a happy gardener! When you grow plants that are prone to pest problems, you either have to keep spraying them with chemicals or see them sport tattered leaves and often suffer declining health. Blush Pink™ Nandina is a fuss-free plant with no insect or disease problems ‘– just plant it and enjoy it!

Evergreen Beauty
Blush Pink™ Nandina is a perennial across USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 6-10. And throughout most of this range, it’s a reliable evergreen. If you live in one of the colder regions in Zone 6, your Blush Pink™ Nandina may be semi-evergreen, which means it may lose some of its leaves in winter, or it may even be deciduous, which means it loses all its leaves. When temperatures dip below 10 degrees, the stems may even die to the ground. But don’t worry because the following spring you’ll see those irresistible pink leaves return and last throughout the whole season! Gardeners in the coldest regions of Blush Pink Nandina’s range can help protect their plant by growing it in a sheltered location and by applying a thick layer of mulch to insulate the roots.

Heavenly Bamboo
That’s the common name for nandina shrubs, even though they’re not really bamboo plants. They’re called this because of their cane-like stems, which you’ll love because they hold their upright shape without flattening out or looking disheveled. Even Blush Pink™ Nandina’s leaves resemble exotic-looking bamboo foliage.

An Elegant Touch in Asian-Themed Gardens
Because Blush Pink™ Nandina has some characteristics that resemble bamboo, it’s perfectly at home in your Asian garden. With design elements that complement the structures and plants in traditional Asian gardens (such as size, shape, texture, and color), your Blush Pink™ Nandina will add the finishing touch that pulls other features together. For example, if you have a water feature in your Asian garden, such as a koi pond or small stream, plant Blush Pink ™ Nandina around the pond or along the stream. And if you have an Asian-style bridge or a stone walkway, cluster several Blush Pink ™ Nandina shrubs together at the base of the bridge or on each side of the walkway’s entrance. These seemingly small details make a dramatic difference in your overall design.

One of the Best Shrubs for Containers
And we’re not overstating it ‘– Blush Pink™ Nandina is an outstanding potted plant. You may not have thought about growing a shrub in a container, but you will love the ease of care and numerous design options you have with this plant. It can stand alone as a container specimen, or you can group it with other plants for a mixed container design. It’s a “filler” plant because of its mounding habit, so you can choose another tall plant for height and several trailing plants to drape the container for a spectacular arrangement. Think of its pink and red foliage when choosing complementary plants, and consider pairing those colors with flowers that are blue, yellow or white.
Heads up for drama: If you really want a dramatic look, grow Blush Pink ™ Nandinas in glazed ceramic pots in your Asian garden!

Versatile Landscape Plant
Because of its compact size, Blush Pink™ Nandina looks best when planting in groupings. Cluster several plants together, spacing them 2 feet apart, to soften stark edges of your home or to form billowy mounds of color at your home’s foundation. If you have a sunny walkway or patio, use Blush Pink™ Nandina as a colorful edging accent. And we can’t think of a prettier low-growing hedge for your side yard! Blush Pink™ Nandina is a spectacular plant for a courtyard garden , where it can outline hardscape borders as an edging plant or add a central focus when planted in a circular pattern around a taller tree, such as a Japanese maple. Blush Pink™ Nandina also adds a touch of color and a look of softness to your entry garden .

Easily Grown and Minimally Maintained
Blush Pink™ Nandina is a durable plant that’s quite forgiving of adverse growing conditions. But you’ll want your plant to thrive instead of struggle, which requires only minimal intervention from you. Optimal growing conditions include full sun with some afternoon shade, rich soil that is slightly moist, and a little fertilizer in springtime. Water deeply and regularly during its first growing season in your landscape to help it develop a strong root system.
Growing tip: Like most landscape plants, Blush Pink ™ Nandina benefits from a layer of mulch that’s applied to a depth of 2 to 3 inches. Pull back the mulch from its base so it doesn’t pile up around the stems, which can invite insects and disease pathogens to attack plants.

Native Habitat
Nandina is a native plant in China, Japan, and India. Nandina is a symbolic plant that celebrates the Chinese New Year, and its stems are often used to make chopsticks. Blush Pink™ Nandina’s cultivar name ‘– ‘Aka’ ‘– is Japanese for “red,” which refers to its magnificent color in fall and winter.