Abelia grandiflora Pastel Charm

Abelia Pastel Charm® 'MINDUO2' is a delightful novelty, which enriches the range of bushes suitable for small spaces and for terrace ornamentation. Its habit is naturally compact and rounded, and its summer flowering is long and abundant, consisting of small bi-coloured, lightly scented, bell-shaped flowers in pale-yellow and pink. Autumn paints its semi-evergreen foliage with rich bronze hues and crowns its graceful branches with pretty reddish bracts that persist for a long time. Easy to grow and not demanding, attractive for a good part of the year, this very beautiful bush is also adorable in a small hedge or at the centre of a flower bed.

Abelia Pastel Charm® 'MINDUO2' is a French creation from 2010. This compact bush from the Caprifoliaceae family comes from Abelia x grandiflora, a vigorous, undemanding and hardy species. With a moderately fast growth, Pastel Charm® will reach approximately 1 m (3.3 ft) in all directions. Its habit is compact, rounded and bushy. This abelia offers a long and lightly scented flowering that lasts all summer, from July to September-October, when few bushes are in bloom. Its countless small funnel-shaped corollas, 2.5 cm (1 in) wide, with a white throat sprinkled with yellow-orange and a powdery pink reverse, are gathered in terminal panicles. As the flowers fade, they give way to pretty compound calyxes of rust-coloured bracts, which is very decorative on the autumn foliage. The fine and arching branches bear a glossy semi-evergreen foliage of light green colour until summer. Under the effect of the first cool nights, the foliage takes on a more or less bronzed hue and persists for a long time on the branch.

This modest-sized abelia can be planted either in groups with other small bushes or alone, or in a large pot. You can plant it in a perennial flower bed as well as in a small free or trimmed hedge. As companions in a flowering hedge, you can choose Kolkwitzia amabilis 'Pink Cloud', Deutzia, Syringa microphylla 'Superba', single-flowered bush roses, or even Buddleia alternifolia 'Argentea'.