Quick Description
A rather attractive columnar garden shrub with finely cut foliage for an overall fine, wispy appearance, excellent for textural effect in a garden composition; very hardy, tough and adaptable; non-invasive as the seeds of this cultivar are not viable
Other Names: Alder Buckthorn

What Makes it Special?
Fine Line® Fern Leaf Buckthorn is primarily valued in the landscape or garden for its rigidly columnar form. It has attractive green deciduous foliage. The deeply cut ferny leaves are highly ornamental and turn yellow in fall.


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Landscape Attributes
Fine Line® Fern Leaf Buckthorn is a multi-stemmed deciduous shrub with a narrowly upright and columnar growth habit. 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 is best pruned in late winter once the threat of extreme cold has passed. It has no significant negative characteristics.

Planting & Growing
Fine Line® Fern Leaf Buckthorn will grow to be about 7 feet tall at maturity, with a spread of 3 feet. It has a low canopy with a typical clearance of 1 foot from the ground, and is suitable for planting under power lines. It grows at a slow rate, and under ideal conditions can be expected to live for 40 years or more.

This shrub does best in full sun to partial shade. It is very adaptable to both dry and moist locations, and should do just fine under average home landscape conditions. It is not particular as to soil type or pH. It is highly tolerant of urban pollution and will even thrive in inner city environments. This is a selected variety of a species not originally from North America, and parts of it are known to be toxic to humans and animals, so care should be exercised in planting it around children and pets.

Fine Line® Fern Leaf Buckthorn makes a fine choice for the outdoor landscape, but it is also well-suited for use in outdoor pots and containers. With its upright habit of growth, it is best suited for use as a ‘thriller’ in the ‘spiller-thriller-filler’ container combination; plant it near the center of the pot, surrounded by smaller plants and those that spill over the edges. It is even sizeable enough that it can be grown alone in a suitable container. Note that when grown in a container, it may not perform exactly as indicated on the tag – this is to be expected. Also note that when growing plants in outdoor containers and baskets, they may require more frequent waterings than they would in the yard or garden.