Upright Red Chokeberry

Love birds? Do you have any tough landscape challenges, like soggy ground or dense shade? Want to do your part to help recreate beautiful habitat for your local community?

Garden designers have fallen in love with the line of Aronia “Chokeberry” shrubs from LetsPlantify.com. They are such showy plants, and you’ve likely started to see them being used in commercial landscapes.

Consider using this beautiful native shrub, as its popularity is really on the rise! The Upright Red Chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia 'Erecta') variety features a very unique upright form, brilliant red fall color and dramatic red berries for wildlife and winter interest.

These easy-breezy shrubs improve your landscape in many ways. Like Sumac, casual naturalizing plants like these create such magnificent, natural-looking landscapes when used in the right spot. Allow Upright Red Chokeberry the room to spread to the full height and width listed in the Plant Highlights.

Upright Red Chokeberry can literally grow in sun, partial shade, full shade, clay soil, sandy soil, wet soil, and acidic soil. Just about the only thing it won’t like is juglone from Black Walnut trees. Think of it, a deciduous accent shrub, with few restrictions, for growing in almost any part of your landscape!

Your local songbirds will flock to these generous plants. While the showy red berries taste tart and bitter to humans, little birdies take great delight in this plentiful food source. You’ll certainly love the look as your shrub is bedecked from top to bottom for fall and winter interest.

Upright Red Chokeberry has superb features and a 4 season appeal. You’ll adore this shrub all year-long.

When spring arrives, Upright Red is liberally covered in clusters of dainty pink and white flowers. Butterflies, anyone? Sneak a few for your cut flower arrangements for special May Day baskets.

By late summer, scarlet fruits are hanging in abundant clusters amid the branches, like tiny ornaments decorating for winter. The dark green summer leaves turn such a brilliant scarlet hue for autumn that Upright Red Chokeberry has often been compared to the Burning Bush for the vibrancy of its fall display.

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How to Use Upright Red Chokeberry in the Landscape

Give this beautiful shrub room to spread out and settle into your landscape. It’s perfect to create long, natural “drifts” in front of taller evergreens. Use a few in loose triangular groups repeated here and there along the length of a naturalized garden border. The upright form makes it an excellent backdrop for your favorite perennials or mixed shrub border.

Turn a low spot in your yard into a Rain Garden. Do your part to help your local watershed by utilizing these easy care shrubs to filter water runoff from roofs and streets before it flows into storm drains. Upright Red Chokeberry makes wonderful filler plants in periodically wet areas.

The design possibilities for this casual, informal shrub are endless. Make a low maintenance, hard-working screen along the side of your patio or along the length of your side yard. They will easily block the view of an ugly garage or messy neighbor.

For a solid screen, plant them 2 - 3 feet apart on center. You’ll measure from the center of one to the center of the next. Upright Red Chokeberry looks best when grown naturally and not used as formally sheared hedge.

Create a diversified, mixed shrub border by adding Blue Muffin Viburnum, Redosier Dogwood and Red Prince Weigela to a bold planting plan with fabulous color and texture. You’ll enjoy watching the motion of butterflies dancing and birds flitting to and fro, as well!

Polish the look of this very modern kind of garden border with facer plants. Low growing, rounded evergreen shrubs or a long ribbon of Ornamental Grasses planted all along the sunny edge of your planting would look incredible.

#ProPlantTips for Care

Upright Red Chokeberry is adaptable to most soils, including those that remain occasionally wet for short periods. It can grow in sun exposures ranging from full sun to full shade.

For best results, give it a moderate amount of water on a regular basis. Apply mulch to keep the root system nice and moist.

Let the plants finish blooming before trimming, and then prune directly afterwards to reduce the size, if desired. Stagger pruning cuts and hide your handiwork by dipping your shears below the height of the canopy.

Use this naturalizing spreading plant in the right spot with plenty of room to “do its thing.” We suppose it’s easy enough to keep the spread in check if you prefer by simply clipping stray root shoots off at the base. But why make more work for yourself? Site it correctly to start with and you’ll never have to worry.

Maintain mature plants with a regular schedule of renewal pruning. Every 3 years or so, remove the oldest, thickest stems out to the ground and allow the younger stems to remain keeping the plants vigorous and blooming and fruiting well.

Enjoy the natural bounty of these carefree fall color shrubs. You’ll feel great about helping out your local ecology and have a terrific looking landscape. Order Upright Red Chokeberry today!