Patricia R. Barrett - Flowering Shrubs: Storeys Country Wisdom Bulletin A-132

by Patricia R. Barrett

Shrubs are among the most versatile of garden plants. They can fill the landscape with color, shape, and texture all year long flowers in the spring, lovely foliage in the summer, berries and bright leaves in the autumn, and distinctive shapes and evergreen leaves in the winter.

Shrubs have an added virtue of fast growth, sometimes maturing in as little as five years and lasting for many more years. Think of the lilacs found blossoming near long-forgotten foundations and the flowering quinces that have been blooming for a century or more. What is best, is that shrubs live a long and happy life with relatively little care. Some, in fact, require no care at all! Amazing and just right for the overworked gardener.

As you become more interested in gardening and in the plantings around your home, you will quickly see that there is more to choose from in shrubs than the traditional squat yew. It has its place, but why not a lovely, scented viburnum or a variegated euonymous just as available and easy to grow but far more interesting.

Although this bulletin will deal mainly with flowering shrubs, what is presented will be true for most any kind of shrub. Flowering shrubs, though, have the added advantage of blooming along with their other virtues, and you can create a garden of shrubs with bloom throughout the season; or one of vibrant spring bloom that will later be a green backdrop for a display of perennial and annual flowers.

A shrub is usually defined as a plant that has multiple trunks or stems and does not grow to a height of more than 20 feet. Of course, nature sometimes doesnt choose to go along with such well-planned categories. But we can safely say that shrubs are woody and perennial, or will live more than two years.

Shrubs do include both evergreen and deciduous plants, those that drop their leaves in the fall. But when we speak of flowering shrubs, we usually mean deciduous shrubs. Shrubs can grow in all parts of the United States and Canada, although most shrubs will fail if the temperature drops to 40 to 50F. Some shrubs are native plants, such as bayberry, sumac, and witch hazel, but many of the familiar shrubs, such as lilac and forsythia, come from China and Japan. Many of our shrubs today are not original species but rather hybrids, results of crossbreeding. Modern plants have been bred for hardiness as well as for a wide variety of bloom color and flower shapes.

If you are new to gardening and can barely tell a forsythia from a yew, then before you purchase plants for your garden, learn something about the different shrubs. Walk around a well-planted neighborhood in the early spring. Look at the varieties of shrubs that are in bloom. Chances are you will see numerous azaleas and rhododendrons coloring the borders of many houses. If you see someone in the garden, ask the person what kind of shrub it is. Most gardeners love to talk about their plants and can give you lots of information.

If you have an arboretum near by, visit it and learn about the different shrubs that are growing there. If they do well at a nearby arboretum, chances are they will also do well for you. Shrubs at most arboretums are well labelled so this will help you in your quest. But, if you cant find the name, bring along a guide that has good photographs of different plants to help with your identification. Other good places to look at mature shrubs are college campuses and cemeteries.

Once you have observed shrubs you will see that they tend to grow in different shapes that can be used singly or in combination to create different effects in the home garden. These shapes are: rounded, spreading, prostrate, low spreading, open spreading, globular, columnar, weeping, and pyramidal.

When you see a shrub you like, whether it is for the shape, leaf texture, or color, learn the Latin name rather than the common name. There are two names for plants: the first is the generic name and indicates the plants genus. A genus is a group of plants that are closely related and have a common ancestor. The second name identifies the species, or a particular member of the genus.

When you have a list of shrubs you like, remember to consider both the nature of the plant and the function you want it to perform in the landscape. Some flowering shrubs are so lovely they can stand alone as a specimen plant, but many shrubs can serve more than one purpose. They may also provide a protective screen from a neighbor, or act as a windbreak, or provide food for hungry birds with its berries. Think about what you want the plant to do before you plant it.

A good way to begin is to draw a sketch of your property on graph paper. Include your home, driveway, terraces, patios, power lines, and drainage fields. Next, sketch in all the trees and shrubs that are already growing. This gives you a good beginning to see what you have and what you would like to have planted on your property.

Shrubs can do quite a bit for your property so think about what you would like to achieve. Would you like to have a hedge of shrubs to separate your home from your neighbors? Do you need a windbreak on the north side of the house? Would you like to have a low hedge running along your entrance path or perhaps a few shrubs to accent your doorway?

Shrubs can hide things such as compost piles or garbage cans. They can even define areas and give you instant outdoor rooms with the right planting. Or, you may simply want a lovely garden of blooming shrubs that you can see from your kitchen window or that will be filled with berries to feed the birds. All of these are possible without too much work. So think first about what it is you would like to see on your property and sketch it in. When you sketch, plan for the future size of the plant by drawing a circle of about the right diameter of the shrubs. You can make a long border and later fill in the details.

Before you plan or plant any kind of shrub garden, keep in mind:

Shrub shape and eventual size

Color of flowers, berries, and foliage

Texture of foliage

Bloom time

Function of shrub

Size and shape. One of the big problems people have when working with shrubs is not considering the plants ultimate height and shape. This is an important consideration.

In addition to the plants ultimate size, however, it is just as important to think about the shape of the plant and its growing habit. Some plants that grow in neat, compact shapes give a more formal look, while those that run rampant in their growth habits will give a more informal feel to a landscape. A line of boxwood will look very different from a hedge made of lilacs, though each is lovely in its own right.

When combining shrubs in your garden, be careful to not mix too many different shapes together. One rule landscapers go by, at least for an informal planting, is that you can combine two shapes in a single planting but almost never three. For example, planting low-spreading shrubs with tall pyramid shapes would work well. But if you introduce a third shape, such as a formal mounded shape or a weeping type of shrub, the design could easily lose its focus. If you are planning a formal planting of clipped yews, then it is easier to mix different styles and shapes bcause they are pruned to keep the lines you want to achieve.