Native Shrubs for the Home Garden
Posted in Gardening Tips on May 7 2013, by Sonia Uyterhoeven
Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG‘s Gardener for Public Education.
Our newest garden, the Native Plant Garden is a 3.5-acre notebook of ideas for your home garden. Native shrubs—like the ones you will see here—are an asset to any landscape, as many of them are durable plants which serve as homes and food for native bird species. Native shrubs often have beautiful spring or summer flowers and colorful fall foliage.
Deciduous winterberry hollies, Ilex verticillata, a standard in the nursery trade, are indigenous from Nova Scotia through Florida and west to Missouri. In their native habitat they prefer moist soils and swampy areas where they tend to sucker. However they will still grow prodigiously in average garden soil, but with a more upright form that can tolerate full sun and light shade.
These hollies are dioecious meaning there are male and female flowers on separate plants. The females are covered with berries later in the season. The male, meanwhile, can be tucked back in a corner. The bright-colored berries, technically drupes, are often red, but can vary from scarlet to orange-yellow, and are eaten later in the winter by over-wintering birds. They are too hard for migratory species which mean they hang on into the winter when they can nourish the birds toughing out the winter, hence the name “winterberry.”
