20 Best Evergreen Shrubs

If you want small green specimens for coffee tables or shelves, then check out these Best Rhaphidophora Varieties! These Mini Monsteras are stunning!

Trailing plants are a great addition to any garden as they provide visual interest throughout the year. In this article, we’ll explore the Best Evergreen Vines for Year-Round Interest, including their characteristics, growing requirements, and unique features.

Have a look at these stunning Orchid Planter Ideas that you can get inspired from to showcase the flowers in a stylish way!

No other plant native to South Carolina has such fragrant and beautiful spring blooms and stunning fall color as the witch-alders. Fothergilla was named after Dr. John Fothergill, an English physician and gardener who funded the travels of John Bartram through the Carolinas in the 1700’s. These beautiful shrubs have been planted in both American and English gardens for over 200 years, including gardens of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Evergreen trees and shrubs are prone to unsightly damage from winter storms. They can be splayed open like a blooming onion or flattened like a pancake by the weight of heavy snow or ice loads. Damaged shrubs sometimes resurrect themselves in a matter of days or weeks; other times, they require severe pruning and a long restoration period. Fortunately, diligent gardeners can take a few actions to prevent serious damage.

You may have noticed your evergreen shrubs and trees shedding yellow and brown leaves this spring. It seems unusual, but it could be a normal leaf and needle drop. While some may believe that evergreen leaves last forever, the truth is that their leaves may only last for a short time, often between one to a few years. Sometimes normal leaf drop goes unnoticed in the fall, for example, with pines and azaleas, because it coincides with the normal shedding of leaves in deciduous plants. As the dormant deciduous plants leaf out in the spring, it seems unnatural for hollies, live oaks, and magnolias to lose their leaves. Is this a distress call for help? Not necessarily.

While native grasses and forbs are my favorite lazy gardener plants, native shrubs rank as must-haves for an easy and attractive landscape. All native or introduced shrubs are generally carefree when they are well-chosen, thoughtfully placed, and planted correctly. Unhealthy plants have problems. Well, duh!, you might say! Any silly person could tell me that. But often, the solutions are obvious.

Do you have a chain link fence you’d like to hide? Cover it with evergreen vines. Evergreen vines are not only a great way to cover an eyesore, but they can also add vertical interest to your garden and even serve as a living privacy screen. Many of them have showy flowers, some even fragrant.

Check out our list of the Best Desert Plants that will add a ravishing appeal to your home with little upkeep.

Not so many years ago, most nurseries only carried the old-fashioned classic we call Pee Gee, for H. paniculata ‘Grandiflora’ (above), with giant conical trusses of white flowers in July that fade to pink and tan as autumn approaches. Perhaps you have a tree form?  It’s the kind of plant often “inherited” along with older houses, and I love passing big ones at nearby farms and gardens at this time of year.Lately, though, as with so many other plants, there’s a proliferation of available cultivars of panicle hydrangeas, and I have tried many good ones: ‘Kyushu,’ ‘Pink Diamond,’ ‘Unique,’ ‘Limelight’ (an unusual recent color break with greenish flowers), and more that I cannot even bother to r

The Korean fir in the photo was my Charlie Brown-style Christmas tree perhaps a half-dozen years ago, a scrawny potted baby I festooned with a few shiny things and positioned in the cool back mudroom. (By late summer, its cones turn tan-colored, so it didn’t decorate itself the way it had in summer. And you can only loosely call them pine cones: A. koreana is in the Pinaceae or Pine Family, but not a true pine.) After the holiday I heeled it in for the rest of winter, moving it to a permanent spot in spring.This beautiful smallish tree, to perhaps 15 or 20 feet tall (30 tops, I’ve read), has just one drawback: It can’t take the heat. For my location, that’s just fine; its ideal setting is zone 5 or 6, just like here. Various references say it is hard from Zone 5 to 7, or some claim as cold as 4 and warm as 8.

This first-ever columnar conifer in my garden career came about quite by accident. I was actually looking for what a friend refers to as “a blob” (a sort of lumpy, wider-than-tall, hummocky-shaped shrub) to replace a Daphne ‘Carol Mackie’ that was badly snow-damaged last fall.Shop as I might for the right new “blob,” I saw nothing that was just right. And then I bumped into another friend at the garden center, who said, “Why not something vertical instead? Change it up.” Aha!punctuation points i considered:<a href=«http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/gardens-gardening/your-garden/plant-finder/plant-details/kc/f930/thuja-occidentalis-degroot» s-spire.aspx>Thuja occidentalis ‘Degroot’s Spire:’ Ilex crenata ‘Sky Pencil’ (Japanese holly):  Grows to 10 feet and 2-3 feet wide; will need help, such as from a cat’s cradle of fishing lin