Holly bushes may be utilized as hedges, foundation plantings, border screens, display plants, or rain garden plants, among other things.
Here are three typical kinds of holly bushes to consider for your garden.
Holly x Meserveae ‘Blue Princess’
‘Blue Princess’ is more of dark green with a bluish hue than a true blue. The female clone of Ilex x meserveae is a 10- to 15-foot shrub with glossy, serrated leaves that are typical of most hollies. It produces crimson berries that give winter interest if you can keep the wild birds away from them. Together with the plant’s appealing leaves, these red berries make the plant attractive enough to be used as a specimen plant. Provide a ‘Blue Princess’ as a pollinator to assure berry production.
Japanese Holly
The Ilex crenata species, often known as Japanese holly, has a shrubby, rounded cultivar known as ‘Hetzii.’ When seen from a distance, this cultivar grows only 3 to 6 feet tall and has small leaves that resemble boxwood. Unlike the ‘Blue Princess,’ this shrub’s berries are black. However, like with other species of Ilex, if you want a berry harvest, you’ll need both a male and a female since they are dioecious plants with either male or female blooms on each specimen.
Sky Pencil Holly
‘Sky Pencil,’ like the previous type, is an Ilex crenata cultivar (Japanese holly). It has small leaves and black-colored berries, much like ‘Hetzii.’ But that’s where the parallels stop. This plant’s cultivar name hints at its distinguishing feature: it’s a shrub that’s exceedingly narrow in proportion to its height. It may reach a height of 10 feet and a width of 1 to 3 feet.
This characteristic makes ‘Sky Pencil’ a popular choice for landscaping around front entrances; columnar plants like this effectively frame an entry.
