Shrubs - flowering
shrubs and foliage shrubs
Shrubs along with trees tend to form the back-bone of
your garden design.
They are defined as being large woody plants without
a distinct single trunk, instead having a few or a great many strong woody
stems that grow upwards from the base without any of them becoming dominant
as in a tree.
They are quicker to mature than trees, but less so than
herbaceous perennials. Typically a shrub will reach a reasonable size within
3-5 years of planting and will flower profusely from them on if it is a
flowering variety, but them will carry on growing, reaching it's final mature
size at about 10-15 years old.
This needs to be taken into consideration at planting.
You want to give them enough space eventually, but don't want to have large
spaces of empty soil for several years waiting for them to fill out. One
way of dealing with this is to plant a little too close together to start
with, or inter-plant with perennials and annuals which will fill the space
in sooner, and then later on, dig up and move the shrubs or perennials to
give them all some more room.
Most mature shrubs that grow many stems from a single
point can be pruned in a similar manner, each year, remove a third to a
quarter of the oldest stems completely, so over time there are no very old
stems that will eventually stop flowering. As a rule of thumb, all pruning
should be carried out immediately after flowering so you don't remove any
buds and you give them the longest time possible to prepare for next year.
If you have a lilac, be aware that they only flower on
wood that is at least as old as last year, so if you prune all branches
every year, they'll never get a chance to flower.
