A Proven Winners® ColorChoice® Flowering Shrubs variety, Abelia Poco Loco™ is a compact semievergreen perennial shrub grown for its attractive foliage and months of fragrant flowers. Its slender, gracefully arching dark-red stems bear bright yellow and orange foliage in spring that matures to green with pinkish red new growth. Clusters of bell-shaped pink flowers sustain pollinators throughout summer, including bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.
A Abelia x grandiflora [syn Linnaea x grandiflora], commonly called abelia or glossy abelia, Poco Loco has a fast growth rate and a naturally neat, globe-shaped, mounding habit that adds appealing structure wherever it's planted. Massed or grouped, it is an excellent choice for general landscaping in beds, borders, and foundation plantings; and it's an especially attractive (and effective) option for controlling erosion on banks and slopes. But it also makes a lovely specimen or low hedge plant.
Tough, easy to grow, and virtually maintenance free once established, glossy abelia grows best in sunny to partly sunny locations with organically rich, medium moist, well-draining soils having an alkaline pH, but it tolerates a wide range of soils, including dry and clay soils. Poco Loco is deer resistant and drought and heat tolerant. Blooms are borne on new wood, so any desired pruning should be done in late winter to early spring before new growth emerges.
