Next to the landscape importance of trees is that of shrubs that grow in our gardens, parks, landscape foundation, street borders, and commercial landscapes. Thousands of different varieties of shrubs are grown to ornament lawns, yards, and borders, but only a few varieties are available to buy at your local nursery for planting, and growing. Many shrubs are selected and grown on a basis of intelligent buying of flowering hedges, evergreen cold hardiness, non-flowering hedges, berry shrubs, and deciduous shrubs. Many shrubs glow with brightly colored leaves in the fall and winter.

Although it is common for some shrub stems to die from shading out, they will be renewed by new shoots; and like trees, shrubs live for years and are considered a good property, longtime investment, and a permanent fixture in the landscape.

Usually planting shrubs as privacy hedges will mature to a point in four to five years, that the privacy screen will be vigorously solid and dense enough to hide whatever lies behind it.

Some shrubs thrive in dry soils; others in wet soils, but most shrubs and hedges fall in-between and require well drained growing areas. All other possible growing extremes are important for planting shrubs, and hedges such as altitude, shade, wind exposure, and soil relative fertility levels. Azaleas, for instance, grow well underneath the shade of most trees, including Pine trees, and will decline fast and soon die, if planted to grow in full sun. Azaleas must have organic matter incorporated into the soil to thrive, and the proper acidity (pH) of the soil is necessary for azalea plants to live. Pine straw is often effective to keep azaleas weed free. Long lines of blooming azalea plants are often dramatic when plant underneath pine trees, when the azalea flowers being to display their expanding blooms. The shallow root system of azaleas require substantial watering during dry spells to insure plenty of azalea flowers, the spring season following summer droughts.

Small Evergreen Shrubs

Evergreen shrubs are an important choice to consider for planting, in order to insure green color presence during the gloomy days of winter. Many gardeners want an evergreen shrub as a hedge to maintain privacy when cold weather arrives. Anise, Illicium florianum grows into small hedges in resorts like Sea Island, Georgia, and exotic red flowers and liquorish aromas rise from the leaves in the summer. Acuba japonica variegata 'Gold Dust' is also called the Gold Dust plant. Acuba makes an interesting low growing shrub to plant and grow next to brick buildings. Cleyera, Ternstroemia gymanthera, is an interesting shrub for coastal areas, because Cleyera shrubs are very tolerant of salt water spray, and the waxy green leaves have a unique tropical appearance in the landscape. Boxwood, Buxus microphylla asiaticum, is also salt water tolerant with dense coloring throughout the zones 5 – 9. Boxwood is one of the most important and popular shrubs to buy in the U.S, notably as a neat, clean grower, Boxwood is not fast growing, thus requiring many years to reach 3 feet in height. Boxwood plants are commonly planted in rows along walkways. Larger boxwood plants work nicely in group plantings in front of buildings

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