Shrubs can be a decorative
addition that adds privacy
to a yard.

Shrub Basics

With all their wonderful diversity of size, shape, foliage, and flower, shrubs can turn a mundane piece of property into a beautiful showplace. Shrubs make the yard inviting and livable. You've probably noticed that builders always plant a few shrubs around newly constructed homes. There may be no trees or grass, but there are shrubs.

Shrubs, with their deciduous or evergreen foliage, are enormously decorative and highly useful. Like trees, evergreen shrubs may have broadleaf or needled foliage and can offer colorful berries or cones, interesting bark, and lovely flowers. Even in winter, their leafless, contorted trunks and interesting architecture enhance the landscape. Their size provides a pleasant transition between tall trees and groundcover plantings, softening the edges of boundaries, foundations, buildings, and walls. They also protect the soil, supporting and sheltering all kinds of wildlife.

Shrubs are versatile. Use them as groundcovers on slopes, as living walls, as backdrops for flower borders, and as screens to block street noise and dust. Put them where they'll obscure landscape eyesores, such as heating and cooling units, swimming pool mechanicals, utility meters, and trash can areas.

Use shrubs to accent pools, patios, and dooryards. Or plant thorny varieties to redirect children and animals using your yard for shortcuts.

Conifers are generating renewed interest. These cone-bearing, needled evergreens are available in dwarf forms -- more suitable scale for today's smaller properties. They offer an amazing array of foliage color -- soft blue, variegations in yellow or cream with green, as well as the traditional green. Whatever the colors, they really stand out in a winter landscape. Conifers also come in many forms -- weeping, prostrate, and topiary, in addition to the usual upright configuration.

Native shrubs are also enjoying long-overdue attention. Because they have existed in the same region long before European settlers arrived, and have adapted to local climate and soil conditions. Unfortunately, Americans temporarily lost interest in them, while other countries happily adopted them. But now we're recognizing their many low-maintenance virtues. They don't require extra watering and tend to resist pest insects and disease. And they're big favorites of local wildlife.