The Creative Shrub Garden: Eye-Catching Combinations for Year-Round Interest - Hardcover

The Case for Shrubs: An Introduction
What do shrubs mean to you? Have you been bewitched by the sweet fragrance of an azalea on a warm spring day? Are you entranced by the delicacy and charm of the new leaves on a Japanese maple? Or perhaps you think of shrubs as big, boring beasts that take up too much room in your garden. Those bony characters you keep in shape with a stout pair of loppers and a pruning saw, more bare stems than leaves and flowers. Or perhaps they are neat bushes you trim into regular shapes with a pair of shears or a hedge cutter.

Some gardeners think of shrubs as rhododendrons; a source of gorgeous colour for a few precious weeks, but perhaps rather green and boring during the rest of the year. Others call to mind hydrangeas, those vast, rounded mounds of flamboyant blooms that colour summer through to fall in shades of white, pink, and blue.

Some think of shrubs as gloomy evergreens that colonize dark, shady churchyards. Others picture annoying, litter-collecting thickets that get in the way of vehicles in supermarket parking lots. But those same shrubs, loved just a little, are precious, shining evergreens that thrive in shade and light up the dark corners of the garden. They are the same shrubs that illuminate the winter garden with their wand-like stems on a frosty winter morning.
 
Many gardeners consider shrubs to be reliable friends that fill the summer garden with flowers, fragrance, and foliage, and that colour the winter garden with bright stems and berries. As with many things in life, garden fashions change. Our affection for a particular group of plants fades, and we focus on another. Over the years shrubs may not always have been the flavour of the month, but they are the backbone of many gardens. But can shrubs be more than a foundation? Can they make up the whole planting scheme, or at least the majority of it, perhaps with a few embellishments in the form of perennials, bulbs, and seasonal bedding plants? Of course they can.
 
What qualities can shrubs offer that other plants cannot? They add permanence, structure, and presence throughout the four seasons, plus much more. This book shows you how shrubs can provide the inspiration and the palette of plants for exciting and colourful planting combinations that enhance the garden picture throughout the year.

You can improve shrubs by pruning to control their size and shape. However, once planted they stand firm; they do not need the regular lifting, dividing, and replanting that many perennials demand to maintain their performance and control their spread. For the most part, shrubs are low-maintenance subjects that will reward season after season. All they ask of the gardener is to choose well for the situation and to prune with a little thought and respect. Shrubs are undemanding garden plants that require only a modest initial financial investment, and they repay it many times over the years.
 
The evolution of shrubs
Shrubs are the foundation of successful planting in today’s gardens. Smaller spaces and busy lifestyles mean that plants need to work hard to earn their keep. Most gardeners, from novices to old hands, welcome low-maintenance plantings. Shrubs offer so much with so little input. Other plants don’t come close.

Nowadays a garden has particular significance as an extension of the home. Whether you live in your garden or look at it like a picture, its appearance is important. You want colour and interest throughout the year. A garden based on shrubs provides this very thing.
 
Gardeners have a wide choice of shrubs today. The variety of plants available has never been richer; the selection is vast compared to just a few years ago. The foundation of that palette is the work of the Victorians. Plant hunters, sponsored by nurserymen and wealthy collectors, unearthed an impressive number of plants, most of which remained in the gardens and estates of the wealthy. Gardening as we know it developed over the past fifty years. In Britain, in the first half of the last century gardening was focused around beans, potatoes, cabbages, a few cottage garden flowers, and the occasional rose.
 
Most woody plants in gardens were roses, specifically hybrid teas and floribundas. These were the popular and fashionable plants of the day. Gardeners always bought bare root, either from a shop or ordered via catalogue or at a flower show, and planted during late fall or winter. (Flower shows then were nothing like the Chelsea and Hampton Court of today; they were smaller, more regional affairs that focused on flowers and vegetables.)

New varieties of roses were in demand, and every year saw the introduction of fresh colour breaks and must-have varieties. The selling names of varieties became increasingly important, as they were what gardeners remembered and discussed. And there were negative aspects to this passion. The prevalence of roses in so many gardens led to the appearance and spread of diseases like black spot, rust, and mildew, which remain the banes of the rose grower’s existence. This spread of disease was compounded by the demise of the coal fire for domestic heating. The sulphur in sooty air suppressed disease, while cleaner air gave it free rein. Another problem was the introduction of many weak and inferior varieties in order to meet the demand for something new.

Today’s roses are different, and they are still some of our most popular shrubs—especially English roses, which combine the repeat-flowering qualities of hybrid tea and floribunda roses with the grace and charm of old shrub roses. Successful varieties have been bred for disease resistance, and their growth habit makes them perfect to combine with other shrubs in creative planting schemes.
 
Demand influences the palette of plants in our gardens. When a particular group of plants becomes fashionable, plant breeders and growers respond by producing new varieties. Herbaceous perennials and seasonal bedding plants are favourites in the United Kingdom, partly because of demand and popularity but also because of a relatively short lead time from initial hybridization to production of a commercial crop. Shrubs and trees are at a disadvantage when it comes to the introduction of new varieties, as they take much longer to grow.

Probably the biggest change in ornamental gardening over the past fifty years is how we buy our plants. I purchased my first shrub, Magnolia ´soulangeana, when I was nine or ten years old. I bought it from Woolworths, an early department store that sold everything from sweets to paint to bacon to flower bulbs. Most ordinary gardeners went to “Woolies” for everyday gardening bits and pieces that they did not get from a specialist seed shop. My magnolia was a typical Woolworths shrub: a stick with roots wrapped in peat and thin polythene, with a simple picture label promising eternal happiness and a lifetime of flowers. It needed a few years to grow and flower, but it eventually took over half the garden, leaving no room for those boring vegetables. Mission accomplished, if rather a long lead time!
 
Nurseries existed at the time, and those I knew of mainly grew summer bedding plants. Garden centres were just beginning, and I was taken on the occasional trip to visit our nearest one, which was probably twenty miles away. I remember buying Hypericum calycinum, which was my second or third shrub. I probably bought it because it was the only thing I could afford, rather than because I particularly liked it. This plant, hailed as good groundcover, was appearing everywhere. Sadly, it became another victim of over-exposure and monoculture. Its magnetism for rust has since rendered it worthless.

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