Shrub gardens can inspire mood, magic

If you desire to create a fabulous garden in a tiny space, shrubs may be your key to success. With them you can create borders, walls, structure, bloom, shade, bird shelter, cutting material and so much more. In fact, there are a great many books dedicated to the topic of small gardening that promote the wise use of shrubs. I’ve spoken of some of these before, but this is the perfect time of year for a review.

“The Small Garden Book” by Peter McHoy is an all-around good guide for design ideas, special features and plant combinations. It is chuck full of great photos, practical designs, excellent how-to instructions and just overall good inspiration.

“Shortcuts to Great Gardens” by Nigel Colborn, or “City Gardens” by Warren Schultz are both short and to the point. “Shortcuts” provides plenty of photo-thought, while revealing secrets to minimizing the wait for garden maturity. Colborn lays out methods to make your garden look older sooner and age with elegance — even on a time schedule and tight budget. The best part is that he doesn’t tread on any sacred cows while doing so.

Schultz’s book, “City Gardens,” highlights a variety of garden styles encompassing a wide array of spaces, shapes and use requirements. In addition, there is a lot of good information on plant varieties for almost any sun/shade condition. While all the information on plants needs to be edited to our mostly Zone 3 environment, it is still a great read and well worth the journey.

These books are great sources of design inspiration with some great suggestions for shrub use. I’m sure a trip through them will leave you wondering why you hadn’t put more shrubs in years ago.

What were you thinking? No shrubs? Really? I love, promote and grow shrubs — and in fact find it difficult to design without them. Hopefully, the following suggestions will bring into focus some of these woody, garden friendly creatures. They really are too wonderful to describe, but let me try.

Golden Nine Bark (physocarpus opulifolius Luteus), is a Zone 2 plant. It’s very vigorous and boasts a true golden yellow foliage when planted in full sun. Golden grows to be 6 feet tall, but can happily be pruned to any size. Try this shrub grouped with anything burgundy, silver and dark green for a dramatic effect. It also looks great with a moderately tall blue perennial in front of it — say salvia blue queen, Veronica spicata blue Jacob’s ladder (polemonium caeruleum) or any type of tall, blue delphinium.

Red Leaf Rose (rosa rubrifolia, or R. glauca) is another old fashioned favorite. In the sun its foliage is burgundy on top with grayish undersides and its bloom is a medium bright pink. In the shade its blooms are a paler, more delicate hue and the foliage is almost completely gray/maroon, with darker edges.

In the sun, red leaf is especially wonderful with our native silver berry (elaeagnus commutata) and in light shade I like to pair it with golden mock orange (philadelphus coronaries aureus), a 6- to 7-foot golden leafed shrub with scented, white blooms. For a shady perennial partner try Giant Meadow Rue (thalictrum rochebruneanum). It’s tall, 6 to 7 feet, with stocks and brilliant, almost neon lavender blooms.

A shrub form of amur maple is especially lovely with it’s green foliage touched by red. It has a delicate bloom and brilliant red, fall color.

Couple this maple with sweetberry honeysuckle (lonicera caerulea edulis), the humble mugho pine (pinus mugo mugus), or a dark-leafed flowering plum and you’ll have a permanent color display that the birds will love.

There are a couple of good examples of a small-space shrub gardens in downtown Palmer.

The Purple Moose Espresso has a delightful little garden enhanced by the charm of the building itself. Surrounded by pavement, this garden is an excellent illustration of how shrubs can be used to create mood and beauty where little existed before. The Presbyterian church in downtown Palmer (The Church of a Thousand Trees) at 713 S. Denali St. has a different type of shrub garden. This garden uses perennials and spring bulbs as accents and shrubs as its mainstay. Even this time of year it remains a fusion of texture, color and form. Go get a cup of coffee, enjoy the cool weather and start planning shrub renovation for spring.

Sally Koppenberg is a garden and food designer. She is the owner of Stonehill Gardens and The Red Beet, a nursery and catering company specializing in Alaska Grown foods, trees, shrubs, perennials and native plants. Contact her at stonehill@gci.net.