Easy to grow and a compact evergreen shrub, White Album Wintercreeper is a rockstar of the evergreen shrub family! This gorgeous wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei) features a stunning shade of green, bordered by a beautiful snowy cream white, for a year-round show in the garden. White Album Wintercreeper is a must-have for any gardener looking for a versatile and beautiful evergreen shrub!
What Is Wintercreeper?
Wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei), also occasionally called Fortune’s Spindle, is a fast-growing, broadleaf, perennial plant that grows as a shrub, vine, or ground cover, depending on the variety. Because it can be considered invasive in some locations and compete with other plants’ root systems, it’s important to learn more about the compact shrub variety. White Album Euonymus is compact and does not spread like the ground cover and vine varieties, resulting in a much more versatile and less invasive plant.
Why You’ll Love White Album Wintercreeper
White Album Wintercreeper is considered one of the best Proven Winners evergreen shrubs for its ease of growing, tolerance of different growing conditions, flexibility with sunlight exposure, cold hardiness, drought tolerance, beautiful winter interest (and year-round garden interest!), minimal care, and fast growth! Unlike other varieties of wintercreeper that can spread and become invasive, White Album Wintercreeper is considered to be one of the most contained and compact cultivars, allowing for great versatility. It can grow to 18-24 inches tall and wide.
This is a newer and improved version of the popular ‘Emerald Gaiety Wintercreeper’. With superior leaf spot resistance, fast growth, and mounded habit, White Album Wintercreeper provides a healthy, easy to grow, compact evergreen shrub for winter interest- keeping its green and cream foliage looking great all winter long!
White Album Wintercreeper makes a beautiful evergreen shade plant, bringing a stunning crisp green and cream color combination to an otherwise shady area of the garden. Tolerant of full sun or part sun, its light requirement flexibility makes White Album Euonymus landscaping ideas easy to incorporate into your home garden. Whether you are looking for evergreen winter planter ideas, planting an evergreen border, or simply planting some wispy wintercreeper in front of the house, White Album Wintercreeper is a must-have for your garden.
Wintercreeper Garden Ideas
Softening Borders, Corners, And Edges In The Garden
One of the best ways to use White Album Wintercreeper is for softening any borders, corners, or edges in the garden. Any garden pathways that need coverage or a “softer” look can benefit from adding wintercreeper. Wintercreeper has a wispy and natural growth habit, even though it is mounded, so the foliage can grow beautifully over spots in the garden that need coverage, which is wonderful during winter months when garden walkways can look quite bare.
Wintercreeper Hedge
Planting an evergreen hedge is a lovely way to add year-round interest and structure to your garden. White Album Wintercreeper only grows to about 2 feet tall, which can make for an ideal low hedge height. Consider planting a wintercreeper hedge in front of a Sprinter Boxwood hedge, for gorgeous year-round interest, and a crisp pop of green and cream backdropped by the bold glossy leaves of the boxwood (that grows 24-48 inches tall).
Wintercreeper Planter
White Album Wintercreeper makes a fantastic garden display in a planter! Since it has such a contained growth habit of 18-24 inches tall and wide, it fits beautifully in most containers/pots/planters, and has the most beautiful growth habit- mounded but wispy, providing the look of a “filler, thriller, or spiller”. And since it is an evergreen shrub, the planter will look great all year long!
Formal Gardens And Cottage Gardens
Wintercreeper is so versatile that it can be seen in formal and cottage gardens alike. For a formal garden, consider a hedge, or fill wintercreeper in the center of a boxwood parterre (lovely!). For an informal garden or cottage garden style, consider planting wintercreeper to wisp over garden pathways and soften corners, borders, or edges in the garden.
Additional Wintercreeper Ideas
- Wintercreeper clippings make the most beautiful foliage in a floral arrangement
- Wintercreeper clippings can be used as the most simple and elegant touch to wrapped holiday gifts
- Wintercreeper clippings can be tied onto cloth napkins to make a beautiful and festive place setting
- Add wintercreeper to a garden with pollinator-friendly plants for a mini butterfly garden (and attract honeybees and hummingbirds too!)
Wintercreeper Companion Plants
Since White Album Wintercreeper has foliage with such a lovely green color bordered by a creamy, snowy white around its margins, it has a refined look that compliments everything! From evergreens with deeper green, to flowers that are deep purple to soft white, this wintercreeper creates a perfect backdrop for a versatile color palette in the garden.
- Sprinter Boxwood (evergreen shrub with stunning glossy green foliage)
- Purple Tulips, Pink Tulips, Blue Hyacinths (for a beautiful spring garden)
- Pink English Roses (for a cottage garden or formal garden)
- Russian Sage (wispy lilac blooms that bloom all summer long into fall, and attract the best pollinators!)
- Endless Summer Hydrangeas or Nantucket Blue Hydrangeas (light blue florets on puff ball clouds of blooms. *Soil amendments may be needed to achieve the blue color!)
- Montrose White Calamint (for a pollinator-magnet, wispy, ethereal white perennial)
- Black And Bloom Salvia (for a pollinator-friendly, bold deep blue/violet annual)
- You really can plant White Album Wintercreeper with anything you wish and it’ll look great!
Planting Wintercreeper
WHERE TO PLANT
- Plant in moist, well-drained soil (wintercreeper does not tolerate standing water or soggy soil)
- While White Album Wintercreeper is more flexible in sunlight requirement, an ideal location will receive at least 4-6 hours of direct sunlight
WHEN TO PLANT
- White Album Wintercreeper can be planted year-round, as long as the ground is not frozen
- Fall and Early Spring are generally the preferred planting times (to avoid the extreme heat of summer as the plant gets established)
HOW TO PLANT
- Dig a hole twice as wide and slightly deeper than the root ball
- Loosen soil around the hole
- Remove the plant from the garden nursery container
- Gently tease some of the roots at the bottom and sides of the wintercreeper
- Place the wintercreeper shrub in the hole with the crown slightly above soil level
- Backfill the hole with soil
- Mound up soil to the base to keep water from pooling.
- Water the soil around the shrub
White Album Wintercreeper Care
WATERING
- During the first planting year, keep soil evenly moist but not soggy
- During the second year, continue to water regularly if rainfall isn’t sufficient
- Water more frequently during extreme heat (it is drought tolerant once established)
- Water more frequently if growing wintercreeper in planters/pots/containers
- Water around the base of the shrub, not directly on the foliage
MULCHING AND FERTILIZING
- Fertilize with a controlled-release, all-purpose/shrub fertilizer in the spring to promote foliage growth
- Add 1-2 inches of mulch around the base of the plant to help retain moisture, keep the roots cool, and keep nearby weeds at bay
PRUNING
- Pruning isn’t needed, but wintercreeper may be shaped to your liking in early spring
White Album Wintercreeper Characteristics
- Plant type: Shrub
- Shrub type: Evergreen
- Hardiness: Zones 5-8
- Height: 18 – 24 Inches Tall
- Width: 18 – 24 Inches Wide
- Height Category: Compact
- Foliage: Variegated, Green And Snowy Cream White
- Light preference: Full Sun To Part Sun
- Water Preference: Average, Drought Tolerant Once Established
- Bloom description: (Not Significant)
- Habit: Mounded
- Maintenance: Easy And Minimal
Where To Buy Wintercreeper
- Local garden nurseries
- Call local landscaping companies who may have access
- Home Depot online
- Proven Winners Direct
A Beautiful And Versatile Garden Shrub
When looking through the evergreen section of our local garden center, White Album Wintercreeper immediately caught my eye in the sea of dark green arborvitae, boxwoods, and more. It really pops in color and provides a fresh, refined look with its creamy bordered green leaves- I knew I had to have some for our garden and I knew it would be great for winter interest!
Other varieties of wintercreeper can lean toward a lime green/chartreuse, or golden yellow color which I don’t prefer, and find it harder to compliment other shrubs and flowers. However, this shade of green is perfect! And I love that it can be the perfect compliment in a flower arrangement (year-round!).
My favorite uses in the garden for wintercreeper has been for softening our walkway to our front steps- with 2 abrupt corners, the wintercreeper truly softens our entry as the beautiful foliage drapes over the path. I have loved planting sprinter boxwood hedges next to the White Album Wintercreeper, as it “relaxes” the formality of the hedge, and the colors compliment each other so well!
Wintercreeper landscaping ideas are endless, and I love that wintercreeper compliments my own personal gardening style of having some formal garden elements (such as a boxwood hedge or boxwood parterre), as well as cottage garden elements that are more free-flowing, airy, wispy, and allows for more “natural” growth. And one of the biggest pluses to growing wintercreeper in the garden has been that it accomplishes all of this while looking great all winter long in our zone 5b crazy Chicago winters!
Easy to grow and a compact evergreen shrub, White Album Wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei) is a must-have for any gardener looking for a stunning and versatile shrub for their garden!
Other Posts You May Enjoy:
A Must-Have Evergreen Shrub: Sprinter Boxwood
3 Best Flowers For Pollinators
9 Most Beautiful Tulips To Plant This Fall (For A Stunning Spring Garden)
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