Forget Forsythia?

One of my favorite garden memories is cutting forsythia boughs in March, before they bloomed, with my Dad. He would give them to Mom who would put them in water in a large glass vase, placed as a centerpiece on the kitchen table. We would watch and sometimes at mealtime discuss, how each day brought small changes that eventually resulted in a bouquet.  I learned some botany from this exercise and the fact that forsythia flowers emerge before their leaves but also that the experience was short-lived. Those long-anticipated flowers didn’t stay.

Outside the forsythia bushes retold this story. With their slender limbs gracefully tossing a riot of extreme yellow blooms about in a late March wind, they endeared themselves as harbingers of spring. But these flowers lasted only one or two weeks. Later there was no fall color or winter interest, in fact, most of the time the forsythia looked like a weed that required pruning. Recently I’ve learned that forsythia is not native to North America and does very little for the local wildlife. It’s not considered invasive, but it does spread over time and is difficult to remove.

Do you think I should plant something else in its stead? Perhaps witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), witch alder (Fothergilla), spicebush (Lindera benzoin), or rhododendron? It’s disappointing that forsythia isn’t a native as one more saving feature besides early-spring-bloomer might help tip the scales in its favor. But still, I recall that childhood memory and what I learned about waiting and rewards. Maybe not a hedge but one bush near the bird feeder to offer a little cover for my avian friends and give me a project for my teenage grandson when he visits. “No running with the Felcos!”