Shrubs

At Eco-Building & Forestry we don’t trim the shrubs in our nursery into “little balls”. We do have shrubs however, that form a natural globe shape. Using the natural growth habits of shrubs can add lots of interest in your landscape and reduce maintenance.

Shrubs can range from ground cover plants less than a foot tall to small tree-shaped plants. Every shrub has different characteristics that you will want to take advantage of for your sustainable landscape. A few of those characteristics include shape, blossom, fruit, shade or sun loving, deciduous or evergreen, type of soil desired, height and width.

Don’t be mislead by plant catalogues that list mature sizes for shrubs. Most of those sizes are wrong. Shrubs tend to grow in height and width or spread out through root shoots their entire lives. They don’t stop growing just because you want them to. While shrubs can be carefully pruned to reduce size in a way that doesn’t ruin their easthetics we have found two methods to fitting the right shrub in the right place

1. Placement: Our expert advice can help decide which shrub varieties should go in certain places in your landscape. Soil and avialable moisture can have a huge affect on shrub growth rates.
2. Chop and Drop:  Using certain varieties of shrubs as a renewable source of mulch can be an effective way of managing them. These types of shrubs are simply cut back to the ground periodically and cut up into little pieces for mulching in place.  The shrub then is allowed to grow back and the cycle continues. Time of year and type of shrub is critical in being successful with this method. Efficient tools are also needed for this operation.

Shrubs can fit into your lifestyle no matter what it is. Some varieties of shrubs make great screening, others can be used for food propuction and still others can be cut for fresh and dry flower arrangements.