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Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteers of Buncombe County

shrubs

Online Seminar: Planting Success – Trees & Shrubs, July 20

July 6, 2023

Gardening in the Mountains presents:
Planting Success – Trees & Shrubs

Thursday, July 20,2023
10 – 11:00 a.m.

Virtual attendance via Zoom video and audio internet connection

Presenter: Barbara Fair, NC State Extension Horticulture Specialist and Associate Professor

Properly planting trees and shrubs helps them establish early and contributes to long and healthy lives.  Questions about soils and amendments, hole size and depth, back fill and whether to stake and wrap the trunk can be site specific and are not always easily answered.  Join Barbara Fair as she shows proper planting techniques for trees and shrubs and how to recognize problems that may develop years later when trees are not planted correctly.

Barbara Fair’s professional and research expertise is in arboriculture – the study of trees. She works with green industry professionals and others throughout NC to educate and promote research-based information regarding plant selection, installation and maintenance to ensure the development of long-lived, healthy landscapes.

Registration: The talk is free but registration is required. Please click on the link below to register. If you encounter problems registering or if you have questions, call 828-255-5522.

Register on Eventbrite

Zoom seminar access: After registration, you will receive an email with instructions and a link to join this online live broadcast via Zoom. The ability to access Zoom through a computer, tablet or smartphone with a reliable internet connection is necessary to attend.

 

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Categories Lectures & Seminars Tags proper planting techniques, shrubs, trees

Shrubs for Fall Planting: Choose Formal or Informal!

October 25, 2021

Fall is a great time to plant shrubs, and there are so many choices! One way to narrow your selection and save yourself some frustration in future years is to picture where you want to plant your new shrubs and how you want them to look.

Roles for shrubs
Shrubs can play many roles in your landscape. These include:

  • Foundation plantings
  • Screens for privacy—or to block a view
  • Hedges to define areas within your property or to define property boundaries
  • Serve as a woody groundcover
  • Source of fall color, flowers, and/or fruit
Formal foundation planting with conifers
Informal hydrangea hedge
Shrubs serving as a woody groundcover on a slope
Beautyberry with fall color and fruit
Formal planting of evergreens

Considerations
Once you’ve decided where you want to plant shrubs and for what purpose, consider how they’ll look before you choose. As you think about landscapes you admire, you’ll likely notice how formal or informal they look. Shrubs are often a good indicator of formality.

  • In formal landscapes symmetry and geometric shapes are the rule—shrubs are typically pruned to have clean lines, whether rounded or angular.
  • In informal landscapes, shrub forms are left to more natural shapes.
Improper pruning decreases the number of flower buds

This may seem an unusual first step in choosing a shrub, but the desired appearance of your shrub may affect several aspects of your choice:

  • If your shrub is evergreen or deciduous—most shrubs that take to shearing are evergreen rather than deciduous
  • If your shrub flowers or fruits you will typically want a less formal shape because shearing may remove flower buds—and prevent the flowers and/or fruit that follow—one exception is if you espalier fruit trees to shrub-size plantings (see “Specialty pruning” section in General Pruning link below)
  • The distance you plant your shrubs from structures or other plantings—shearing will limit height and perhaps width of your shrub, depending on if your shrub is planted as a specimen or in a hedge.
Many holly species can be pruned to formal shapes


Choices!
For formal shrubs, think typically evergreen and smaller-leaved. Many dwarf and smaller conifers will grow into pleasing shapes and stay small with little pruning. Although boxwoods are the classic selection for shearing, the devastating appearance of boxwood blight makes this a riskier choice. Some of the evergreen hollies (Ilex spp.) are suitable replacements:

  • Inkberry hollies (Ilex glabra) are native to NC, slow-growing, and tend to grow in a rounded shape that requires little pruning. There are dwarf varieties that grow only to 3 feet tall, and the species typically tops out at 5 to 8 feet.
  • Yaupon hollies ( I . vomitoria) are also NC natives, suitable for shearing, but faster growing, larger, and less hardy—only to USDA hardiness Zone 7a, so not suitable for colder parts of Buncombe County.

Note that Japanese hollies (I. crenata), which tolerate extensive pruning and are often used for topiaries, is an invasive plant and has been reported along the Blue Ridge Parkway in Buncombe County.

For informal landscapes, both evergreen and deciduous shrubs can provide a variety of sizes, shapes, colors, and seasons of interest. In addition to many varieties of hydrangeas and viburnums—some of which are evergreen—there are many lesser-known shrubs that are excellent choices for WNC landscapes. A few that are also native include:

  • American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) has arching branches, is 3 to 8 feet tall and 3 to 6 feet wide. Small flowers attract pollinators in late spring/early summer and distinctive purple berries and yellow foliage make this shrub a stand-out in fall. Some varieties have white or pink berries; all beautyberries are attractive to birds.
  • Carolina allspice/Sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus) forms rounded shrubs 6 to 12 feet tall and wide with fragrant, showy red flowers in spring are visited by pollinators. Unusual seedpods form in fall.
  • Red chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia) is typically vase-shaped, 6 to 10 feet tall and 3 to 5 feet wide. It has four-season interest, with white flowers in spring that attract pollinators, shiny green leaves in summer, attractive red fall foliage and red berries that feed birds and mammals, and exfoliating bark during the winter.
    Sweetshrub flowers in early summer
    Red chokeberry has beautiful fall foliage and berries

Planting
Now is the time to plant! Autumn planting encourages strong root growth—cooler temperatures and fall rains make for lower maintenance, too. Give your shrubs a great start by digging a planting hole that is only as deep as the root ball, but 2 to 3 times as wide. Backfill with existing soil rather than other materials. Mulch lightly, keeping the mulch away from the stems, and keep well-watered throughout the winter months. Enjoy!

Article by Debbie Green, Buncombe County Extension Master GardenerSMVolunteer

 

For more information:

Planting and caring for shrubs: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/extension-gardener-handbook/11-woody-ornamentals

Pruning trees and shrubs: https://chatham.ces.ncsu.edu/2015/02/pruning-trees-and-shrubs-2/

General pruning: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/general-pruning-techniques

Landscape design: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/extension-gardener-handbook/19-landscape-design

 

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Categories General Gardening, Shrubs Tags fall garden chores, garden planning, landscape planning, shrubs

Time to Maintain: Pruning Evergreen Shrubs

March 5, 2018

Do you have boxwoods, cherry laurels, or other shrubs with evergreen leaves in your yard or landscape? Late winter and early spring are the best times to prune these and many other leafy evergreens in your landscape.

Aucuba (Aucuba japonica), boxwood (Buxus sempervirens), cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus), and osmanthus (Osmanthus sp.) are a few of the many shrubs grown for their evergreen foliage rather than their blooms or fruit. Often serving as foundation plants and hedges, such shrubs have a variety of leaf shapes and leaf variegation (different colors in the same leaf) that make them welcome in the winter landscape.

Spotted Laurel, Aucuba japonica_J Maughn_CC BY-NC 2.0_Flickr
Aucuba (aucuba japonica) or spotted laurel
Boxwood hedge_spring garden_Ken Dodds_CC BY-NC-ND 2.0_Flickr
Boxwood (Buxus sempervirens) hedge
Osmanthus_leaves and budding flowers_Homer Edward Price_CC BY 2.0_Flickr
Osmanthus or tea olive, budding flowers

Do you need to prune?
Although the title of this blog post is “Pruning of Evergreen Shrubs,” of all the plants in your landscape, evergreen shrubs require very little annual pruning! They grow into desirable forms by themselves and only need an occasional helping hand from you. When you do prune, keep the following in mind:

  • Always carry a sharp pair of hand pruners in your hand or a leather scabbard on your belt when working with the evergreen shrubs in the yard.
  • Be on the lookout for dead or broken branches and remove them promptly.
  • Remove any branches that are crossing over each other as they can rub the bark and make the plants more susceptible to infection.
  • Prune back branches that are growing onto driveways, sidewalks, and patios. When pruning, be sure to cut back to a branch or node that is pointing in the direction that you want it to grow.
  • When you shear hedges, remember to leave the bottom of the plants a bit wider than the tops to get light to the lower limbs, keeping them lush and green.
  • Prolonged use of electric hedge shears will result in a very small veneer of leaves just on the outer surface of the plants. If part of a continually sheared plant dies, the inner leaf buds will not develop and you will be left with a “hole” in your hedge. Take a look inside your hedge, and if you do not see leaf growth along the inner branches, you need to seriously consider using hand pruners to thin out portions of the plant canopy so light gets into these inner areas and the secondary buds have a chance to develop.
Topiary at Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, Bishopville, SC
Topiary at Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, Bishopville, SC

Some of these plants (such as boxwood or Japanese holly) can be pruned into fantastical shapes in topiary form. Plants shaped this way bring to mind animals, ships, and buildings. Forming plants into topiaries requires a tremendous amount of time and pruning effort to maintain their shape—almost constantly pruning off the stray branch or leaf—but the reward is a uniquely personal landscape.

 Cultural considerations
Evergreen shrubs are relatively disease- and insect-free and can be remarkably winter hardy. The fact that these plants keep their broad leaves throughout the winter, however, makes them particularly susceptible to winter desiccation and damage. You can avoid this by choosing the correct varieties for our area—pay strict attention to the hardiness zone when purchasing shrubs. Western North Carolina is generally in the USDA Hardiness Zone 6 or 7. Keeping a layer of mulch around the base of these plants will help to conserve moisture and minimize winter damage.

Caution! Know your shrubs!
Now is NOT the time to prune evergreen shrubs that you grow for their flowers! If you are uncertain, the Extension Master Gardener volunteers of Buncombe County can help you identify the plants in your landscape.

  • In general, shrubs blooming before June bloom on old season’s growth and you should prune them directly after blooming. Examples of plants in this category include azaleas and rhododendrons (both are Rhododendron spp.), as well as Japanese camellias (Camellia japonica) and mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia). We will discuss their care in a future blog post.
  • Shrubs that bloom later in summer—such as hollies (Ilex spp.) and Pieris spp. (commonly known as andromedas or fetterbushes)—bloom on new growth so you can prune them before growth begins in the spring.

Article written by Bob Wardwell, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer.

Learn more
The Art and Science of Pruning
by N. Jordan Franklin, Consumer Horticulture Agent
Clemson Cooperative Extension

Pruning Trees & Shrubs: General Pruning Techniques
by Barbara Fair, Lucy Bradley, and Anthony LeBude
NC State Extension Publications

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Categories Seasonal Chores Tags evergreens, pruning, shrubs

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