Evergreen Shrubs

About

Evergreen shrubs are the working backbone of a garden: they hold their foliage through winter, hide fences, fill borders and give the showier seasonal plants something to stand against. This is the full range, close to 600 varieties from lilly pillies, viburnums and murrayas to grevilleas, camellias and coastal rosemary. Narrow it down by the mature size you need, the sun the spot actually gets, and how often you are willing to prune. How to choose an evergreen shrub Three questions sort this entire collection. First, mature size: check the height and width on each listing and match it to the job, because a shrub that wants to be 3m will never be happy clipped at 1m, and the fight will cost you two prunes a year for the life of the plant. Second, growth rate: fast growers give quick cover but need trimming two to four times a year, while slower varieties hold a tidy shape with a single annual prune. Third, position: most hedging and border shrubs want at least half a day of sun, though there are dependable choices for shaded beds too. The main groups in the range The hedging staples are here in depth: lilly pillies led by Lilly Pilly Resilience , sweet viburnum, murraya, photinia and box, the plants that build most Australian green walls. The native contingent is even larger, with more than fifty grevilleas plus bottlebrush, banksia, tea tree, westringia and correa bringing flowers, toughness and honeyeaters. Then come the classic flowering exotics: camellias, gardenias, azaleas, abelia, Indian hawthorn, lavender and hibiscus, along with foliage colour from nandina and loropetalum. Whatever the style of the garden, its backbone is somewhere in these three groups. Where evergreen shrubs work across Australia Tropical and subtropical gardens. Murraya, gardenia, hibiscus, ixora and the lilly pillies power through heat and humidity. Choose psyllid resistant lilly pilly selections in humid areas. Warm temperate and coastal gardens. The widest choice in the country. On th