Lol, I am sure you meant to put up a link like this Philadelphus - Mock Orange not a corporate website.

I didn't intentionally put a link at all, I expected the OP to be able to google it :0

If you miss a space after a period, the system will think the "IT" is an Italian website.

tj

there are some spectacular named varieties of philadelphus .... .. one plant can fragrance a couple acres ..

and there are some common ugly non fragrant ones.. that arent worth the space they will take up.. and they can be huge ...

ken

the better ones can have huge flowers.. and grow better in full sun ...

Thank you! Interesting that here we use the name "mock orange" to refer to osage orange trees which we also call bois d'oc. Or maybe it's just me and my own ignorance!

This mock orange has a lovely scent, has been there for years and pretty much neglected. Although the neglect my be that it is on the edge, probably inside the boundary of a natural area so there isn't much that a resident is allowed to do. Considering the same natural area is bursting with invasive honey suckle shrub this is a nice option to be looking at!

That is a perfect example of how common names are both useful and confusing. I grew up with Moclura pomifera and we called it either mock orange or osage orange. I encountered Philadelphus much later in life and every time I hear 'mock orange' I think of the tree, not the shrub.

Some people call Choysia ternata Mock Orange too. Good reason to use botanical names. I'm the opposite of Sarah. I grew up with Philadelphus being the archetypal MO. Never even seen Maclura.

Pittosporum tobira is commonly referred to as mock orange as well :-)

Philadelphus sure is nice when it's blooming, but is utterly "blah" at any other time of the year.

As it is with most flowering plants after blooming they become rather inconspicuous.

And with spring blooming shrubs - like Philadelphus, lilac, forsythia, beautybush, etc. - the bloom season is so short that one is left with a large green lump for nearly half the year and collection of bare sticks for the other half!!

"As it is with most flowering plants after blooming they become rather inconspicuous."

That's a fairly inaccurate blanket statement. Gardengal lists a few good examples of that phenomenon, but I have a whole host of different flowering shrubs on my property with multi-season interest.

It would be nice to see some pics of your plants, sure you will not mind to post? :-)

I have one of the non fragrant types mentioned by ken, but I certainly don't consider it ugly. I wonder what you all consider worthy of planting ? Every shrub can't have "3 seasons of interest",

The best shrubs can...but yeah, not every thing can.

Sometimes you just gotta have some background shrubs.....those that are almost invisible in the landscape until something makes them stand out or they just serve as green backdrop for something else more showy. Like the scent of the mock orange when flowering or the amazing purple fall berries of the beautyberry. Makes the big green lump feature so much more tolerable :-)

Thanks everybody for the feed back! I've got about 200 yards of a fence line that is on the edge of some woods that I'd like to slowly pull out the invasive exotics and replace with better plants. Background singers are important--if everything is a star nothing is a star. I have much use for a nice background singer that can take the mic for just a song or two then be unobtrusive for the rest of the season!

Philadelphus is very easy to grow from cuttings. Scrounge a bunch of foot long lengths, shove them into the ground and forget them for a few months. Don't let them dry out if you don't get regular rain.

Philadelphus is beautiful when in bloom and the scent is so rejuvenating. One of my favourites.

Philadelphus coronaria aurea is a particularly good foliage shrub, even after the flowers fade.