All the Dirt on Gardening

Shrub planting season is here and there are more choices than ever. Whether your garden needs tall or short, pencil thin or a thick, the selections for adding year-round beauty have never been so appealing. Shrubs serve many purposes in the landscape and do not have to be those boring blobs of green commonly seen around fences and foundations. In order to be called a shrub, plants have to be made of several woody stems that do not die to the ground over the winter. If you think of a garden you admire, you probably see it as a picture viewed from a window or a terrace, with layers of plants. The plants at eye-level, between the taller trees and the shorter perennials are often shrubs. The two main categories of shrubs are evergreen which hold their leaves or needles throughout the winter and deciduous types that drop their leaves. Evergreens include boxwood, euonymus, Burford holly and Nandina (heavenly bamboo), as well as the needle-bearing juniper, pine, and spruce. Some se...

Shrubs feed pollinators, too! Downy Arrowwood Viburnum or Viburnum rafinesquianum is a native shrub with pollen-loaded flowers in May - June. Not great to plant near the font or back door since the flowers bring bees, long-horned beetles, flies,  mining bees and other bugs. In the fall the leaves are red-wine and the berries are blue.   Downy arrowwood likes a bit of shade and the edge of woodlands where the soil remains well-drained. If it is happy, it will sucker and give you a thicket of loose branches. Good for stabilizing hills.