Sidelined in recent years, decorative shrubs are ideal for shady urban plots
If you are a regular reader, it will probably come as no surprise to you that I am fascinated by horticultural trends. While these can often be dismissed as faddish, I believe they are essential for driving innovation forward, allowing us to flex our creative muscles instead of sticking to a narrow range of tried and tested ideas. However, I am the first to admit that a love of the new and unusual can come with a hefty downside. It can cause us to overlook perfectly valid options because their horticultural star is not in ascendance.
With style barometers, such as the Chelsea flower show and glossy gardening magazines, still dominated by schemes of multi-stemmed small trees dotted in a sea of prairie-like perennials, perhaps the biggest victims of this process are shrubs. While they were a keystone of most planting plans in the 1970s, today this whole group has, sadly, been sidelined. Given the ever decreasing size of our plots, however, I find this a travesty. So here are a few of my favourite quirky and novel shrubs that will provide year-round structure and character in spaces too small for even the smallest tree to squeeze into. Why they aren’t more popular, I will never know…
Continue reading...from Home And Garden | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2VWrnNi
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