Plant Evergreens for Winter Interest

Japenese-Holly-Ilex-Crenata.-Photo-Proven-Winners

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!