Purple Beauty Heath
Erica cinerea 'Purple Beauty'
Height: 12 inches
Spread: 24 inches
Sunlight:
Hardiness Zone: 5a
Other Names: Twisted Heath
Description:
An excellent groundcover or garden touch for poor, acid soils, featuring radiant purple flowers throughout summer over dark green evergreen foliage; requires organic highly acidic soil, full sun and absolutely no standing water
Ornamental Features
Purple Beauty Heath is smothered in stunning spikes of purple bell-shaped flowers rising above the foliage from mid summer to early fall. It has dark green evergreen foliage. The tiny needles remain dark green throughout the winter.
Landscape Attributes
Purple Beauty Heath is a multi-stemmed evergreen shrub with a mounded form. It lends an extremely fine and delicate texture to the landscape composition which should be used to full effect.
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.
Purple Beauty Heath is recommended for the following landscape applications;
- Mass Planting
- General Garden Use
- Groundcover
- Naturalizing And Woodland Gardens
Planting & Growing
Purple Beauty Heath will grow to be about 12 inches tall at maturity, with a spread of 24 inches. 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 is a selected variety of a species not originally from North America.
