Your Garden By JUDE COSTELLO
THIS week I am thinking about deciduous shrubs which I love in gardens, often in mixed borders.
There is such a vast choice and so many are strikingly beautiful when in bloom.
Modern designers seem to have forgotten how lovely a seasonal changing garden is and how useful deciduous shrubs are in achieving this.
If you plant woodland bulbs underneath, the garden can still be lovely when the leaves are missing. Similarly, if coloured or contorted stems are included there is great winter interest.
Willows and cornuses come in reds and yellows, and the hazels, willows and robinias have contorted branches, all useful in your gardens. To keep the coloured stems you must prune regularly to keep the young coloured stems growing.
The much more common feature of deciduous shrubs is the amazing flowers, some in early spring like forsythias through to summer-autumn bloomers like lagerstroemias. Some hazels and pussy willows put on a display in winter as does viburnum bodnantense.
From spring through summer, some beauties include several viburnums, juddii, plicatum, burkwoodii, opulus and carlesii for example, having beautiful blooms, autumn colour as well as coloured berries on some.
Look out for spireas, deutzias, berberis, ribes, kolkwitzias, mollis azelias, sambucus, shorter growing magnolias, cornuses, weigelas, aronias, chaenomeles, acers, amelanchias and many more.
Another feature you can choose is those with beautiful bark, some acers, prunuses and lagerstroemias will deliver brilliantly.
Some of these will be in your local nursery or you could order now to be included in their bare root order.
