Native to the swampy woodlands of eastern North America, inkberry shrubs are surefire winners in the winter landscape. They grow in sun or shade and don’t mind wet spots in the yard. And inkberry is deer resistant and tolerant of poor salty soil near the road.

William Cullina, plant and garden curator at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens and a frequent horticultural lecturer, names it as one of his favorite shrubs.

“Inkberry has long been one of my design staples, because of its adaptability and its lustrous, deep evergreen foliage that shines even in winter — and, more important, because it has a certain billowy, mounded character that is wild yet formal at the same time,” he writes in “Native Trees, Shrubs, and Vines” (Houghton Mifflin, 2002).

Though they can get leggy over time, inkberry shrubs need very little attention from the home gardener.

“There are few shrubs that you can plant and just let go that will keep such thick, even shape as inkberry, and yet it never looks forced or overly styled as boxwood or Japanese holly can,” writes Cullina, the former longtime nursery manager for the New England Wild Flower Society in Framingham, Mass.

Known botanically as Ilex glabra, inkberry shrubs are slow growers — 6 to 8 inches a year — and tend to be no larger than 3 to 6 feet tall and wide.

Small purplish berries appear in fall and then fade to black for winter. (Some varieties have white berries.)

Dwarf varieties of inkberry include ‘Compacta,’ ‘Densa,’ ‘Nordic’ and ‘Shamrock.’

Like other members of the holly family, inkberry prefers acidic soil and a long drink of acid-loving fertilizer in the spring.