Choose Your Shrubs Wisely

publication date: Apr 7, 2008

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author/source: Kate Copsey / STAFF

By Kate Copsey / STAFF

Spring is a wonderful time if you are gardener. From perennials popping up in the garden to trees and shrubs in bloom, everything is a delight. What is not quite so delightful are the strange choices that people make in their garden. Even worse is the fact that some of these mistakes are made by professional landscapers.

One such mistake that is clearly evident in spring is the poor choice of material for hedges and foundation materials. These closely clipped forms require time to keep them looking trim and neat. So when you pick the wrong shrub for your hedge, you will constantly be cutting and trimming, trying endlessly to make a shrub conform to an unnatural form.

Some things are quite happy being hedges and spheres while others have a naturally open character that makes them poor candidates for formal work. Roaming around the area I have seen several examples of the latter.

Glossy Abelia (Abelia grandiflora) as a shrub.

Of particular note are hedges made from Forsythia, Loropetulum and Glossy Abelias. These are all loose, arching shrubs that can grow several feet in a year. When you train them into a hedge form you loose that natural and casual look.

For many of these shrubs, trimming back the summer growth to keep them tidy also compromises the bud production. Consequently, what should be a glorious display of color is greatly diminished.

Much better material for hedges and neat forms are those that grow slowly and do not produce significant flowers. Small leaves also work better than larger leaves such as those found on magnolias. Boxwood, holly, privet and euonymus are all excellent species that are readily available and make great selections for formal clipping.

Equally important as the material you use is what you want to do with shrub. A small hedge that edges a garden bed or focal point needs to be something that will not try to grow to four feet tall. Picking a dwarf form of boxwood that only grows to one foot or so will save you a lot of time and energy over the growing season.

If you are planning a hedge or formal entrance design that needs closely trimmed material, consider what you use carefully and you will be able to enjoy the garden much more. Conversely, if you have inherited a hedge with unsuitable material you only have a few choices. One is to let the shrub revert to its more natural shape and the other is to start again. The third, of course, is to continually maintain the hedge throughout the summer, and for most folks that is way too much work!