Juneberry

Lamarck’s serviceberry is fully hardy and gets through the Central European winter outdoors without any protection. Leaf fall in autumn is normal, and it reliably sprouts again in spring. Only in a pot should you protect the roots: wrap the pot in fleece or hessian, stand it on a polystyrene board, place it out of the wind and water sparingly on frost-free days so that the root ball does not dry out.

The most reliable method for the home garden is layering: in spring or early summer, choose a healthy, flexible shoot close to the ground, bend it carefully down to the soil and fix it with a wire staple or stone. Cover the layered spot lightly with soil and keep it evenly moist. After a few weeks to months, roots have formed; then separate the layer from the mother plant and plant it at its final site. Cuttings are possible but more demanding: from mid-April to the end of May, cut shoot tips of this year’s growth about 10 to 15 cm long, remove the lower leaves and insert them in free-draining seed substrate. Put the pot in a bright place without direct midday sun and keep the humidity high. Expect a higher failure rate than with other shrubs, so layering is usually the better choice. For sowing, collect ripe berries in summer, wash the seeds out and sow them in October directly outdoors or in pots that stay outside over winter. The serviceberry is a cold-stratification seed: the seeds need the winter cold (cold stratification) to germinate in spring. Alternatively, stratify the seeds for a few weeks cool in the fridge and sow afterwards. Note: without sufficient cold treatment, the serviceberry germinates only very slowly or not at all, and plants grown from seed may differ from the mother plant. Grafting onto rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) as rootstock is nursery practice and produces stable standard trees with early flowering; for practised gardeners it can be done in spring as whip-and-tongue grafting or in summer as budding.