The interest in landscaping with native plants that I share with many of my readers is not new. I have on my bookshelf a copy of “American Plants for American Gardens” by Edith Roberts and Elsa Rehmann, published in 1929, that speaks of an ever increasing demand for native plants that “fit into the informal, intimate, seemingly unstudied effects that are sought for in many grounds and gardens today where flowers are luxuriantly intermingled, boundaries are freely planted, trees are irregularly grouped and lawns are sometimes left unclipped.” Roberts was a plant ecologist and Rehmann a landscape architect, a partnership we need to see more often these days.
Our gardens can feed the desire to feel closer to nature. We feel compelled to go beyond creating gardens that simply look like nature, striving to create gardens that act like nature, gardens that provide suitable habitat for wildlife, that recycle resources, that foster biodiversity. We are interested in the marriage of ecology and landscape design.
Growing native shrubs is a decision to be intimately involved with the landscape, for much of their beauty is subtle. They are endowed with elusive qualities that we miss unless we walk into the garden, look closely, stick our noses or focus our eyes in the right place, in the right season. You must look closely to notice the bronze freckles spattered on the golden autumn leaves of summersweet clethra, a native shrub popular for its sweetly fragrant summer flowers.
I look forward to the fruits of our native winterberry hollies in the depth of winter. If it has been a good year for fruit set, the red berries clustered around leafless gray stems will brighten gardens and roadsides into late January, even February, before the birds finally eat them.
Winterberry is Maine’s only red-berried holly (if you ignore recent efforts to rename mountain holly, Nemopanthus mucronatus, as an Ilex, or true holly). It is our only Christmas holly, its bare branches of red berries harvested for holiday decoration or left on the shrub to view from windows near the fireplace.
Found growing in the wet soils of red maple swamps and on the bare shoulders of Cadillac Mountain, winterberry is at home in most gardens. It copes well with compacted soils and withstands drought. Alkaline soils, however, cause yellowing of the foliage and stunted growth. For best fruiting, plant winterberry in full sun.
Two new winterberry cultivars have been recently introduced by Spring Meadow Nursery and will be available in local garden centers in spring. Both are tall-growing forms reaching six to eight feet in height. The dark red berries of “Berry Nice” winterberry are so vivid that the original plant was selected by sight at a distance of one-fourth mile. Its foliage drops in the early fall, extending the period of fruit color.
“Berry Heavy” also loses its leaves early, providing an extended period of orange-red fruit display. The original mother plant was evaluated for years by the breeder who came to the conclusion that it rivals all other winterberry selections for its sheer mass of fruit. The fruiting branches are ideal for use in indoor arrangements.
All hollies, including winterberry, are dioecious, meaning male and female flowers are borne on separate plants. (“Dioecious” literally means “two houses.”) One male plant will produce enough pollen to ensure an abundance of berries on several females; a ratio of one pollinator to every nine females is often recommended. The trick is to plant the right pollinator, as clones selected from different regions of the country have different flowering times. Just any male will not do.
Fortunately, horticulturists have selected cultivar pairs to ensure proper timing of pollination. Both “Berry Nice” and “Berry Heavy” should be planted with “Jim Dandy” as the pollinator. Check with your favorite garden center for recommended pollinators for other winterberry varieties.
Winterberry hollies are essential plants in the ecologically functional landscape. More than 40 species of birds are known to eat the fruit, including bluebirds, brown thrashers, wood thrushes, cedar waxwings, flickers, gray catbirds, mockingbirds and robins. In most winters, however, the gardener has a while, at least through Christmas and often into the new year, to enjoy bright red berries in a snow-covered landscape, before the birds come and take it all away.