Shrubs

About

Shrubs do the structural work in a garden: the hedges, borders and flowering layers that sit between lawn and canopy. This is the full range, over 650 varieties from 50cm border fillers to 6m screening plants, so the filters matter more than the scrolling. Decide the job first, hedge, screen, border or feature, then narrow by mature height and your climate. The main trade-off to watch is growth rate against clipping, because fast cover always brings more maintenance. Start with the job, not the plant A page this size only makes sense once you name the task. For privacy and hedging, the heavy lifters are lilly pillies, murraya, viburnum and photinia: Lilly Pilly 'Resilience' reaches about 5m untrimmed and holds happily at 2m to 3m, while Mock Orange ( Murraya paniculata ) gives a fragrant 3m hedge in warm climates. For borders and low structure, look to Westringia 'Zena' at 1m, gardenias at 1.2m to 1.5m, and rosemary 'Tuscan Blue' at 1.5m. For seasonal colour, camellias carry autumn and winter, hydrangeas own the shaded summer bed, and Tibouchina 'Alstonville' brings purple through autumn at up to 4m. The privacy shrub collection and native shrub range are tighter shortlists if the job is already clear. Use the filters to turn 700 into five The sidebar filters run on the same data as these descriptions, so they are the fastest route to a shortlist. Filter by mature height band first, then climate zone, then the tolerance that defines your site: frost, drought, salt wind or wet feet. A feature filter such as Pet Friendly, Bird Attracting or Fragrant usually finishes the cut. Thirty seconds of filtering beats twenty minutes of scrolling every time. Matching shrubs to climate In tropical and subtropical gardens, murraya, gardenias, ixora and tibouchina thrive on the humidity that camellias and hydrangeas merely tolerate. In cooler southern gardens the roles reverse: camellias, photinia, westringia, viburnum and rosemary are all frost hardy, while murraya and gardenias s