Gouchaultii Red Dogwood Plants

Cornus Alba Gouchaultii Hedging

Delivered by Mail Order Direct from our Nursery with a Year Guarantee

Cornus alba Gouchaultii is a vigorous shrub with coloured young bark and variegated leaves. Dogwoods are popular because they are fast growing, happy in almost any soil and have a great winter colour. Gouchaultii boasts all of those qualities and adds to them with its variegated, pink-tinged foliage. With large, wrinkled leaves that have margins ranging in colour from cream to yellow and random wine coloured splashes, this is possibly the most interesting dogwood to look at during the summer months. If left unpruned, it will produce small white flowers from May to June, which develop into pretty white berries that are sometimes shot with blue, like a mature cheese. However, it is the shiny red bark, rather than the flowers and fruit, that is of interest to most gardeners. Few plants can light up a winter scene like dogwood, once their leaves have fallen. They can be used to great effect dotted around the garden or in big clumps and go well beside a pond or river. Cornus alba Gouchaultii will reach 2-3 metres.

See our selection of dogwood hedging and shrubs 

Cornus alba Gouchaultii plants are delivered bareroot during winter (Nov-April). All our hedge plants are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots don't count...).

History & uses of Gouchaultii Dogwood: 

These plants hail from the lands between Siberia and North Korea. This particular variety was bred in the 1880's. It is one of the best dogwoods for frost pockets and cold areas.

Growing Cornus alba Gouchaultii plants:
Dogwoods are vigorous plants that will do well in most places. The ideal spot is wet and in close to full sun: a bog garden, river bank or the edge of a marsh are all great.
Dry soil is fine, but prepare it in advance with lots of well rotted manure and compost.
If your Dogwood is looking poorly, use a quick release fertiliser once a year; one that increases the acidity of the soil is best, just before you apply their yearly mulch.

Prepare your site before planting:
Hedge plants like Cornus alba Gouchaultii are very tough. The only essential preparation is to kill the weeds in a strip a metre wide along the planting site: improving the soil should not be necessary. If your soil is exceptionally poor and dry, then digging in some well rotted manure and/or compost is worthwhile.

Watch our video on how to plant a garden hedge for full details. The plants in this video are delivered pot-grown, but planting out bareroot stock is essentially the same.
Remember to water establishing plants during dry weather for at least a year after planting.

Hedge Planting Accessories:
Prepare your site for planting by killing the weeds and grass with Neudorff WeedFree Plus.
You can buy a hedge planting pack with sheets of mulch fabric and pegs to hold it down.
If you are planting in an area with rabbit and/or deer, you will need to use a plastic spiral guard for each plant, supported by a bamboo cane.
If your soil quality is poor, we recommend using mycorrhizal "friendly fungi" on the roots of new trees and shrubs.
You can also improve your soil with bonemeal organic fertiliser and Growmore.

After Care

After you have planted your Gouchaultii dogwoods, the most important thing to do is water it in dry weather. You will also need to weed around the plants. Watering should be thorough, so the ground is soaked. Let the soil almost dry out before watering again. Watering & weeding will be necessary for at least a year after planting.

Trimming Dogwood plants:
Specimen shrubs:
To get loads of bright new stems each winter, all you need to do is to coppice (hard prune) your plants, starting in their first year after planting.
In March, use clean secateurs to cut all the stems down to about 15cm, 6 inches, from ground level, varying the height of the cuts if you don't want the shape to become too uniform. After that, apply a good blanket of mulch around, without touching, the plants.
You can do this every year, but every other year is sufficient and better for the local wildlife.
Hedges: Immediately after planting, cut the plants back by 50% and then trim them with the rest of the hedge as normal.

Special notes on caring for Cornus alba Gouchaultii hedges:
Cornus alba Gouchaultii is a very tough hedge plant that shouldn't need special attention once it has established. If you didn't use a mulch fabric, it is beneficial to mulch around the base of the hedge each year.

Hygiene & Diseases:
Dead, damaged or diseased wood can be pruned off as soon as it appears.
Disinfect your pruning tools between every cut if there is any sign of disease.
Burn or dispose of any diseased material, do not compost it.