People say bush when they mean to say shrub, just as we speak of the landscape around a home as the yard, when it may not be a yard at all but something much more. To me, a yard is an empty, relatively passive place of lawns and sprinklers – praiseworthy things, but a garden is a place of active beauty.
| Mail-order nurseries for shrubs: www.goldmedal plants.com; Joy Creek Nursery, Scappoose, Ore., 503-543-7474 or www.joycreek; and David Austin Roses of Tyler, Texas, 800-328-8893 or www.davidaustinroses.com. |
We mention this because shrubs are on our mind. Winter is the time for ambitious planning for the year ahead, and nothing is more intertwined with the success of a garden than picking the right shrub for the right place. But the shrub has not been considered in a long time. Perennials, grasses and, now, annuals again, often are seen as the stars of the show. Shrubs are the chorus; they are just there, taken for granted. But consider how the garden would fall silent without them.
Shrubs fall into two loose categories. There are small shrubs such as spreading junipers and Japanese hollies, and there are big ones such as oakleaf hydrangeas and viburnums. Some are deciduous and others evergreen, but that doesn’t matter. The most important aspect of shrubs is their size.
Small shrubs that are visually static, such as boxwood or dwarf barberry, can be used to create a low hedge. More interesting shrubs such as the daphne or caryopteris work fine as knee-high accents in a border or a conspicuous bed. When we ponder big shrubs, though, we are weighing plants that give structure to the garden.
They are used at the base of trees to fill glaring holes and bring trees down to earth. Stout shrubs are planted to create screens for privacy or to form a backdrop for flowers or to mark transitions. When a path curves, or drops, a carefully placed shrub hides the way and injects some mystery and drama to the experience.
In a city garden, a shrub that grows to eight feet high and six feet across can achieve all these things. Indeed, the urban gardener must consider the largest shrubs carefully, and project their growth 10 to 15 years ahead.
Flowering quince, one of the first and showiest heralds of spring, can be lovely but is also of brief ornament and needs artful pruning to avoid twigginess. Another old favorite, mock orange, is delightful in its fragrant spring bloom but is too large and too dull the rest of the year to warrant planting in all but the largest places.
Not all the old workhorses are ready yet for the pasture. People have discovered that mature hybrid azaleas grow large, far larger than imagined (even big ones can be moved to more spacious settings, with some effort), and there are many named varieties worth seeking for planting in the back of shaded borders.
Aucubas are attractive big shrubs and, like other broadleaf evergreens, brighten up shadier corners of the garden with their glossy leaves. Camellias, hollies, osmanthus and mountain laurels will do the same.
The panicle hydrangea is the most treelike of its tribe, though one that is handsomely shrubby is the Tardiva, named for its particularly late-season flowering.
Lacecap and mophead hydrangeas are smaller and bloom earlier. Plant three or five or even seven in a mass, and this way they transform the empty space beneath large deciduous trees.
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