Shrubs and Bushes

Shrubbery is so much more than your Grandma’s old-fashioned hedges!  Selections offer many textures, colors, kinds of foliage, plant shapes and sizes.

When you look at gardens, yards, and foundation plantings, bushes serve several roles.  Shorter than most trees, taller than the average flower, bushes are “the Middle plants”.  Many are multi-stemmed; most are dense and full.  Evergreen bushes include junipers, holly, boxwood, spruces, chamaecyparis, pines, arborvitae, and yews.  Some grow in an upright habit and can be pruned to shape or left in a natural form.  Others are flat or prostrate, and make beautiful and unusual ground covers.  These are wonderful additions to a landscape, used either as an accent or to complement a large stone or a short wall.

There are many deciduous shrubs available too, with a range of decorative features.  Spring blooming bushes with masses of color through early summer include weigelas, viburnums, lilacs, pieris, quince, honeysuckle, and flowering almonds; hydrangeas show off huge blooms from July into fall.  Some shrubs have variegated foliage, with green leaves outlined in yellow or marbled with cream.  Some have dark purple-black leaves, or vibrant orange or red, and really stand out against pale siding or stone walls.  Bright, shiny berries form on some bushes, like beautyberry, coralberry, FineLine buckthorn, pieris, and holly.

Shrubbery ranges in size from almost flat but broad, to upright dwarf bushes about 18″, to symmetrical 3-5′ globes, to large 15′ multi-stemmed clumps.  Whether used singly as a specimen, or spread throughout a foundational bed, or used as a living fence along a boundary, these “Middle” plants  are as versatile as they are beautiful.