Advice On Choosing Landscape Evergreen Shrubs
The official start of spring is just a few weeks away and that means that many of you will be planning to overhaul your landscape design. If that is what you plan to do, keep in mind that solid landscape design principle should be followed. The primary key being that evergreens are the anchors of any solid design.
Here are just a few of my favorite evergreens for home landscapes and what I like and dislike about each one.
Yews
Taxus Yews are the most common evergreen bush found around foundations from the near south to the Midwest and all the way out east. They have dark green foliage and the new growth each spring is lighter neon or pale. They make a great backdrop to your landscape plants and flowers and they are not susceptible to insects or disease. Yews can also take a tight sheering, so if you are looking to carve cartoon characters into your bushes, Yews will be just fine. The only drawback I can see with Taxus Yews is that they are just way too common and boring.
Arbovitae
Arbovitae are another very popular everygreen but are more versatile than the Yew. Arbs can be used for foundation plantings in the form of globes or also planted in hedges for screening in their upright forms. They grow fast enough to show visible results, but dont really need a lot of pruning, making them lower maintenance. They do get issues with bag worm insects and winter damage, but those can be prevented easily.
Box woods
Since we are looking at evergreens that are getting prettier by succession, we should talk about the boxwood. These guys look more like a traditional leafy bush or shrub but dont drop their leaves in colder weather. They can be trimmed very tightly and are low maintenance because they are slow growing. The will, however, dry out if hit with cold winter winds, so plant them in a more protected area.
Holly Shrubs
Holly is my favorite evergreen and is the foundation of my own home landscape. You can get varieties differing from light green to dark, and larger leaves to smaller. In addition, as long as you plant both male and female plants near one another, they will develop bright red berries in the fall, giving a nice color variation during the winter. Holly can dry out in winter winds and may need to be sprayed with an anti-desiccant before the cold weather hits.
These are just a few of the basic evergreen bushes or shrubs available to act as a foundation for the rest of your landscape. As always, check with your local nursery to find out which ones will work best in the area of the country you live in.
