Evergreens deserve a place in perhaps every landscape, with their display of leaves or healthy needles year round. They help to keep garden beds protected from excessive weed growth, offering shade from direct sunlight, utilizing ground water to help with drainage, and keeping a landscape looking lush even in the winter months. When deciding what evergreen shrubs to choose from the plant nursery for a Bergen County, NJ, property, you should consider placement, size, and aesthetics.
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Purpose and Placement of Evergreens
Many evergreens require very little, if any, special care when it comes to growing them. In fact, most are considered low maintenance. An evergreen’s individualized care will come into play when you consider its main purpose in the landscape and placement. For instance, boxwood evergreens make wonderful topiaries. They are often used for hedging and creating borders and defined spaces. Holly shrubs produce berries and droppings that could be attracting to pets and small children. Some evergreen shrubs reach large sizes even though they are still considered a shrub. Some evergreens like full sun, while others thrive best in partial shade. When you are designing a landscape to include evergreens, be sure to look at the surrounding environmental conditions, landscaping, and nearby structures to make sure you select the evergreen that will perform best in that area.
The Size of the Evergreen
Evergreen shrubs can be extremely small, known as dwarfs, or can reach heights up to 15 feet tall. Because they can range in size so drastically, make sure when you are choosing the evergreen that you are keeping the growth width and height in mind. This will help prevent any issues once it is planted and rooted. Below are a few examples of evergreen shrubs and their varying sizes:
English Boxwood: A slow growing slow growing evergreen with rich green foliage only reaches approximately 2 to 3 feet in height.
Blue Star Juniper: This evergreen shrub produces beautiful blue green foliage and remains small, at 1 to 3 feet in height.
Emerald and Gold: This shrub is known for its vibrant golden and green foliate and only reaches heights up to 2 feet.
Yucca: This beautiful evergreen shrub grows to heights up to 6 feet tall and produces rich green foliage with white flowers.
Blue Holly: This evergreen is a winter wonderland favorite. It grows up to 15 feet high. It has blue-green foliage and produces red berries.
Flowering Evergreens
The term “evergreen” can be deceiving. It simply means that the shrub is expected to produce foliage year round. This doesn’t mean that the foliage is green. In fact, many evergreens are golden in color during the winter months. Evergreens also produce blooms that come in varying colors. Knowing what color your evergreen will produce and when the particular evergreen blooms is important when selecting the perfect evergreen shrubs for your landscape design. Here are a few examples of the types of colors some evergreen shrubs produce:
Winter Heath: This popular evergreen will produce pink or purple blooms adding nice variety of color to a landscape.
Mountain Laurel: This evergreen’s blooms are white flowers with deep rich purple/reddish outer bands.
Holly: Holly shrubs are whimsical additions around the holidays because they produce beautiful red berries at winter.
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