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Indiana University Press - Moya L. Andrews

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112 pages

English

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A guide to choosing and placing shrubs in your garden

This beautifully illustrated book on landscape gardening addresses shrubs and how to determine which you should plant among your perennials and where. Shrubs provide the foundation for a pleasing, yet low-maintenance garden. They are long-lived, have the ornamental appeal of perennials, and provide variety in color, size, shape, and texture, as well as shelter and berries for birds. Shrubs can make attractive arrangements indoors and provide seasonal variation through the entire year. Gillian Harris's illustrations are botanically correct works of art that make this book absolutely irresistible.

List of Illustrations
Preface

Introduction
1. Shrubs Are Versatile
2. Shrubs Attract Wildlife
3. Bringing Flowers Indoors
Gallery

Appendixes
References
Zone Map
Index

Sujets

Jardinage

Jardins du monde

Arbres

Shrubs

General officer

Shrub

Region

Gardening

Regional

General

Arbre

Informations

Publié par	Indiana University Press
Date de parution	29 mars 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780253009142
Langue	English

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Extrait

Shrubs
Large and Small
Shrubs
Large and Small
Natives and Ornamentals for Midwest Gardens

Moya L. Andrews Gillian Harris
Illustrated by Gillian Harris

AN IMPRINT OF INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS BLOOMINGTON INDIANAPOLIS
This book is a publication of
Quarry Books
an imprint of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
2013 by Moya L. Andrews and Gillian Harris All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in China
See page 147 for Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication data.
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
TO OUR PARENTS
Noel and Verne Landsberg (in memoriam) Richard L. and Shirley Ann Donley Harris
Contents
List of Illustrtions
Preface
Introduction
ONE Shrubs Are Versatile
TWO Shrubs Attract Wildlife
THREE Bringing Flowers Indoors
GALLERY
Appendixes
References
Zone Map
Index
Illustrations
1. Lindera
2. Amelanchier
3. Pieris
4. Viburnum
5. Chaenomeles
6. Aronia
7. Syringa
8. Cornus
9. Paeonia
10. Philadelphus
11. Physocarpus
12. Sumac
13. Itea
14. Calycanthus
15. Clethra
16. Vitex
17. Callicarpa
18. Hamamelis
19. Ilex
20. Evergreens
Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.
-Anglican hymn,
Mrs. Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895)
Preface
The woody shrubs that we choose to grow, together with our trees, determine the architecture of our gardens. While we can easily change the herbaceous plants we grow from year to year, the shrubs are long-term residents and become a major part of the fabric not only of our gardens, but of our lives. For gardeners the passage of time is punctuated by what happens in the natural world around us and especially in our own little patch. Most of us enjoy the anticipation when a favorite shrub is in bud and about to bloom, or when it is time for special birds to appear in search of berries we provide in our shrub border. The expectation is often almost as satisfying as the reality.
The shrubs we select and grow near our homes, of course, reflect our priorities as well as our preferences. If we love flowers we choose as many deciduous flowering shrubs as we can. If we love the vibrancy of winged activity in our yards, we plant shrubs that provide food and shelter for birds and butterflies. We also plant some native shrubs to provide food for the caterpillars that will become butterflies and the other insects that are essential to the maintenance of our ecosystem. If we are concerned about the environment, we carefully avoid planting invasive species because birds eat their seeds and excrete them in the wild, where they (e.g., Asian honeysuckle, autumn olive, and other aggressors) can overwhelm our native plants. But most of us don t avoid including some benign imported plants that have proven to be good citizens in gardens here across many generations. These are some of our most-loved shrubs (e.g., lilacs and roses), which have lived on our shores since the days of the colonists. As well as having showy flowers, many of these traditional shrubs provide nectar for pollinators in the garden.
In this book we have showcased twenty of our favorite shrubs, and described many more garden-worthy varieties. Some are natives and some are imported from temperate regions in other parts of the world. The shrubs referred to as natives in this book are, but for a few exceptions, those that naturally occur in the eastern U.S., i.e., east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio, and Minnesota to Arkansas. Most are solidly Midwestern natives, and some are primarily denizens of the south that also venture north across the Ohio River. All are suitable for growing in the Midwestern garden. There are so many interesting and beautiful shrubs available that gardeners nowadays have no problem finding varieties that fit their needs and ones they will enjoy for years to come. Plant hybridizers have provided us with many new cultivars. Especially noteworthy are the small, slow-growing, and even dwarf shrubs that are now on the market. These make shrub maintenance so much easier, as older varieties often grew too big for small home gardens and required a lot of pruning to keep them in check. Now we can find a shrub for every site and one that is the perfect size at maturity if we read the plant tags carefully and do a little research before we make our selections.
One of the temptations for a modern gardener, faced with such a wide range of options, is to choose one of every shrub that is available, but we caution against having a garden made up of many singletons. Rather, one should choose three of a similar kind, or even five, if there is room. This usually helps to create an integrated design, though of course an occasional accent plant is useful, too. But a garden full only of accents usually ends up looking like a nursery.
We also urge gardeners to choose, as multiples and especially as accents, shrubs that have more than one season of interest. For example, while forsythia is gorgeous in spring, it has nothing to recommend it the rest of the year and the older varieties are hard to control. So we would certainly not want to have a front yard full of forsythia, as the interest is brief and the boredom is lengthy if such a bush is front and center. Rather, we suggest that a repertoire of shrubs of different types and with many varied seasonal attributes, such as foliage color and/or berries in fall, and branching structure and bark that are interesting in winter, be built up over time. For example, choose shrubs with bloom times that span different months and that provide a sequence of bloom so that the focus of attention moves around the garden at different times of the year. Of course, if a gardener has a nostalgic reason to grow a specific shrub, in spite of its providing interest in only one season of the year (e.g., My grandmother grew it ), that is certainly a compelling enough reason to include it in the garden.
The best shrub plantings, from our perspective, are eclectic and include a number of our natives as well as some tried-and-true types of imported shrubs that have been proven to be well behaved and reliable in U.S. gardens. Such a mix includes specimens known to support native wildlife and to create a healthy and diverse ecosystem. After all, each sustainable home garden that exists is a microcosm of the macrocosm. It represents a step toward attaining the cumulative goal of restoring and protecting our nation s lands.
Shrubs
Large and Small
Introduction

The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.
-Alfred Austin

For those of us who love flowers and want to grow masses of them, it is easy to lavish all of our attention on the annuals and perennials in our gardens and to ignore the shrubs. They stand there, large and small, so commonplace that we sometimes hardly see them, and yet they are essential elements of the architecture of our gardens.
A shrub is a woody plant with multiple stems. A close relative, the subshrub, has a woody base but top growth that is soft and that dies back after a hard freeze, just as herbaceous perennials do. A true shrub, however, has lots of woody growth arising from the base, unlike the single stem which is characteristic of a tree. This woody growth persists in winter after the foliage is gone and provides branching that adds charm to the landscape, especially when shadows are cast on snow. Some shrubs, like trees, have interesting bark as well. Birds and other wildlife appreciate the security of the cover provided by shrubs. The height of shrubs varies greatly: some hug the ground, and others grow as high as small trees, so height is not a factor in classifying a plant as a shrub. By definition, a shrub is a bushy woody plant with several permanent stems instead of a single trunk. Of course it is possible to train a shrub to have a single trunk, and when this is intentionally accomplished by human intervention, the plant that results is called a standard. Standards, because of the labor-intensive process involved, are always more expensive than shrubs with a natural shape.
Among the evergreen shrubs in gardens, there are those with leaves, such as the broadleaf rhododendron, and there are needle-bearing evergreens. Evergreens are essential in the winter landscape, and some, like holly with its fruit and rhododendron with its flowers, contribute color as well. Most evergreens, however, because of the mass and continuity of their basic color, contribute permanence to the year-round architecture of a garden and also provide useful backdrops for flowers in the growing season. Designers suggest that one-third of the plantings in a garden should be evergreen to carry the garden through the winter.
Many deciduous shrubs flower lavishly and become focal points in a garden when they bloom. So if a gardener chooses shrubs carefully, there can be a shrub in bloom at most times in the growing season. In autumn, color is provided by shrubs that have vibrant foliage and fruit. For example, Callicarpa, commonly called beautyberry, has yellow foliage and clusters of glistening purple drupes, and Itea Henry s Garnet produces leaves that are mahogany red. It is characteristic of flowering shrubs to produce flowers low on their multiple stems, at eye level or below, unlike trees