Try Winterberry for Long-Lasting Berries
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- January
- 28
Trees and shrubs with berries add lots of interest and color to the winter garden — and your birds will say thank you very much.
Winterberry, with its long-lasting large red berries, has long been one of my favorites. It’s absolutely maintenance-free and always covered with berries by Thanksgiving. Some years, the berries last all the way to spring.
This large deciduous shrub or small tree can reach a height and width of 6 to 10 feet. I’ve got an old one that’s easily 10 feet tall and its branching habit has become much more treelike over the years.
Known botanically as Ilex verticillata, this hardy American holly likes rich acidic soil and it doesn’t mind wet spots. Mine is right by a natural spring and it’s often got wet feet in winter and spring.
Young shrubs stand rather stiffly in the landscape, but with age winterberry takes on a nice round and wide shape. New growth emerges from the crown and roots.
In the spring, winterberry has inconspicuous greenish-white blooms on its silvery branches, followed by deep green leaves in summer.
Lots of new varieties have come onto the market. This one that I shot last week at the NY Botanical Garden is called ‘Winter Red.’
Here’s a file photo from our library of more winterberry shrubs at the Botanical Garden. Wow, snow really does them well.
The berries make good arrangements indoors, especially for the holidays when set among a few boughs of evergreens.
Outdoors, give it a backdrop of evergreens to really show off the berries.
This entry was posted
on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 11:06 am by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
