Ask any experienced gardener what he considers one of the most useful groups of garden plants, and he will probably reply, “dwarf shrubs.”
New houses, whether traditional or contemporary in design, are low and sprawling, often on one level. Landscaping for these houses requires dwarf shrubs, along with some moderate-growing kinds.
Terraces and patios, walls and fences, walks and paths, and structures like garages and garden houses demand shrubs that do not grow out of bounds quickly.
Not only small houses and gardens but larger ones have uses for this versatile group of plants. A rock garden needs to be met, flower borders that require small kinds, such as floribunda roses, and shrub plantings that can use low shrubs to face them down.
Garden features, like pools, steps, lamp posts, planters, and raised beds, often need low shrubs suited to their scale.
Important Use of Low-Growing Shrubs
Most useful are the shrubs that grow to 3’ or 4’ feet, such as slender deutzia and ‘Anthony Waterer’ spiraea. Those of moderate habit are eligible, too, but they may need periodic pruning.
If tall kinds like spiraeas and forsythias are used and kept cut low, they lose their natural character and become stiff.
As a group, these small shrubs are divided into evergreen and deciduous kinds. A combination of both will give the most interesting effects.
An important use for low-growing shrubs is along the foundation of the house. Where windows are close to the ground, under 3’ or 4’ feet, consider such broadleaf evergreens as:
- Drooping leucothoe, with hanging white flowers in the spring;
- Mahonia, with holly-like leaves that become bronzy in winter;
- American Pieris, with upright flower clusters in the early spring
- Sprawling rose daphne with fragrant pink flowers
Combination of Low-Growing Shrubs
In your combination, include needle evergreens for foliage contrast and winter color.
Dwarf Japanese yew (Taxus cuspidata nana) and Japanese cushion yew (T. cuspidata densa) have a low spreading habit, remain dark green and lustrous all year round, and thrive equally well in sun or shade.
Low junipers, like Sargent, which forms large mats, and Andorra, which turns purplish in winter, can be used as ground covers.
Well suited to entrance plantings is the slow-growing mugo pine, which is always dependable.
The list of kinds, evergreen or otherwise, is extensive and includes the following:
- Convex-leaf Japanese holly and is a more compact form.
- Heller holly
- Dwarf azaleas like Hinodegiri
- Dwarf hybrid rhododendrons
- Hills-of-snow hydrangea
- Japanese flowering quinces like `Cardinal’ (double red)
- `Nivalis’ (white) and fothergilla or bottle-brushes, particularly the dwarf fothergilla (Fothergilla gardenii), which grows only to 3′ feet.
- French or blue hydrangea, doing well in part shade, remains a low shrub in the North. Where not top hardy, cover during winter.
Slope Problem
Many gardeners are confronted with the problem of what to do with slopes. Where sunny and dry, try the junipers already mentioned or others, like the very hardy creeping juniper, with bluish-green needles, the Waukegan juniper, a creeping variety with steel-gray foliage, and the flat creeping juniper, which grows only 6” inches tall.
The trailing bearberry, or Arctostaphyios, is another excellent creeping plant for sandy banks.
Where conditions are more favorable, do not overlook the cotoneasters, with their gracefully arching branches clothed with small, glossy leaves and enlivened with red berries in the fall.
- Rockspray cotoneaster, with flat, horizontal branches, is ideal along a low foundation.
- The small-leaved cotoneaster, which develops into a delightful tangled mass, can be allowed to grow over a rock outcropping.
- The prostate bear-berry cotoneaster (Cotoneaster dammeri), attaining 1’ foot, can be planted in small rock gardens.
St. John’s Wort
In front of stone or brick walls, try summer flowering golden St. John’s wort or hypericum. Its single yellow flowers appear over many weeks.
Smaller and equally hardy is the Kahn St. Johnswort, but other yellow shrubs for summer color include the potentillas or bush cinquefoils, with small yellow blooms from May until frost.
These, too, will do well in hot, dry places where the soil is poor. Newer varieties include ‘Gold Drop’ and ‘Moonlight.’
Boxwood
You may want a low, formal hedge along a walk or the edge of a terrace. The dwarf Japanese yews already mentioned are excellent, but English boxwood, where hardy, especially the dwarf form, suffruticosa, known as the true edging box, is without peer.
Where not hardy, try the similar Korean boxwood, a variety of the little leaf boxwood (Buxus microphylla).
Its only undesirable feature is that its foliage turns yellowish in the winter, but some strains stay green.
Dwarfest boxwood of all is the compact ‘Kingsville,’ another form of little leaf box. It remains under a foot.
Evergreen Barberry
Along a terrace, consider some of the evergreen barberries, like the warty barberry, with spiny, leathery leaves, the four-foot three-spine barberry, covered with sharp spines, the hardiest of all, and the more tender dainty barberry (Berberis concinna), with thorny twigs and leaves that are white on the undersides.
For touches of dark red, there is the 3-foot red-leaf form of the Japanese barberry called ‘Crimson Pygmy’ or ‘Little Beauty.’
The upright form, known as the true-hedge column-berry, erect and rigid, can be used as a narrow, low-clipped formal hedge.
Planters attached to the house and raised beds in gardens rely on these low-growing shrubs.
Other candidates include the following:
- Hardy, sweet, smelling February and Giraldi daphnes
- Flowering almonds
- Lavender
- Heaths and heathers
- Evergreen box sand-myrtle
- Mint shrub (lavender spikes in mid-summer)
- Bluebeard or caryopteris ‘Blue Mist’
- Dwarf Hinoki cypress
Roses
As a group, floribunda roses have endless uses, flowering freely in masses as hedges or individual plants.
The devotee may want to try some old-fashioned roses, like the fragrant French or gallica rose or the Scotch rose, with pale yellow single flowers in early summer.
Forms of Evergreen
There are forms of evergreen euonymus, like ‘Emerald Pride’ and `Emerald Cushion,’ that can be kept clipped into low one-foot hedges in front of flower borders.
Allowed to grow naturally, they acquire a pleasing open, loose, rounded habit. Evergreen glossy leaves are bright green all year.
With such a long list of low-growing shrubs, gardeners need not be at a loss, thanks in part to hybridizers constantly developing new kinds suited to today’s houses and gardens.
44659 by George Taloumis