The various species of burning bushes, or Euony-mous, are attractive and bushy shrubs that offer good landscape contours and contrast, but they are probably best known for their gorgeous scarlet, firered, or fire-pink colors during the fall season. Dogwoods (Cornus) are shrubs or small trees that have opposite deciduous leaves and branching. A number of dogwood shrubs are useful and colorful as garden ornamentals. Chief among these are the silky dogwood (Cornus amomum) and red osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera), which grow in moist soil conditions. Red osier dogwood is the more colorful of the two shrubs, with bright red branches that provide attractive year-round landscape color, especially in winter. Almost all of the dogwoods are valuable garden shrubs for wildlife, both as nesting cover and for their fruits.
Dwarf Trees as Evergreen Shrubs
Evergreen shrubs add beauty, texture, and year-round cover as ornamentals. Many species are noted for their broad leaves and showy flowers, others for the protective cover that they offer wildlife. Many dwarf varieties of trees have also become landscape shrubs that offer year-round color, variety, and cover. Another of their properties is their remarkably slow growth, usually only a few inches a year. Dwarf trees are used as ground covers, creeping along the ground and over stone walls and fences. Some of the many types include the cypress (Chamaecyparis), which provides dense and colorful foliage, junipers (Juniperus), which range from low growth forms to spreading forms and are able to tolerate urban and suburban conditions of low moisture and poor soils, dwarf pines (Pinus), whose long needles offer landscape and rock garden diversity, and yews (Taxus), which are commonly used for hedges and topiaries.
Of these, the prostrate or ground junipers are especially useful. These low-growing evergreen shrubs rarely reach a height greater than 3 feet but may spread in a circular mat several feet in diameter. The horizontal stems of ground juniper burrow into the soil surface to send up numerous upright-arching stems that form a dense ground cover. The sharp and prickly points of the leaves also make this shrub useful as a protective mat or hedge.
See also: Fruiting Shrubs, Rhododendrons and Azaleas
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