Japanese Holly Illex Crenata. Photo: Proven Winners
Evergreens provide a constant sign of life and color in a winter landscape. If you have a heavy percentage of herbaceous and deciduous shrubs and trees, your landscape looks pretty drab in the winter months. By choosing a few key evergreen trees and shrubs to plant around your landscape as a backbone, you’ll keep things looking nice all year long.
Evergreen is merely a plant characteristic, not a botanical classification. An evergreen plant is any plant which has leaves present on the branches all year round; many (but not all) conifers are evergreen; many broadleaf plants are also evergreen. The converse of evergreen is deciduous (shedding all the leaves for part of the year).
Evergreens create a year-round show and offer:
- Hundreds of varieties of trees and shrubs
- Assortment of color, texture and form
- Great for screening and creating privacy
- Good backdrop in beds and borders
- Perfect for focal point in a mixed bed
- Provide nesting and shelter for birds
- Conifers are constants….in all seasons
Some of our favorite evergreen shrubs and trees:
Boxwood
Cryptomeria
Golden mop cypress
Globe blue spruce
Cherry Laurel
Concolor fir,
Weeping alaskan cedar
Green Giant arborvitae
Korean fir
Lacebark pine
Mugo pine
Norway spruce
Japanese holly
Inkberry
Japanese plum yew
Norway spruce
Rhododendron
PJM hybrid rhododendron
Weeping alaskan cedar
Falling in love with conifers is easy! Consider choosing something with maximum visual interest…perhaps an eye-catching color (from near-aqua to gold and every shade of green), or an unusual texture or habit. Just make sure that what you choose doesn’t outgrow your space. The giants can grow as large as 100 feet and the dwarf varieties stay more contained.
If you want to add some evergreens to your landscape, or have questions about your landscaping, call Whitehouse Landscaping at 484-300-4290. We’re always happy to help you!