Add Timeless Shrubs to Your Garden

(Page 5 of 5)

December/January 2000
By Geraldine Adamich Laufer 
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Finally, witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) holds a special place in my memory. Ideal as a picked flower, witch hazel is very long-lasting and comes in colors from dark cinnabar through the palest yellows. The Chinese and Japanese species, H. mollis and H. japonica, are winter bloomers. I will long remember the day in 1975 when I met as a student with my role model, Elizabeth Scholtz, then director of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and the only female to hold such a position at that time. Blooming on her desk in the dead of a New York winter, scenting the entire room, was a beautiful spray of witch hazel. To me, the fragrance of witch hazel will always evoke the heady heights of the horticultural world.

RELATED CONTENT

Incorporating herbal shrubs pays big dividends. They add dimension, fragrance, color, variation, and a welcome break from higher-maintenance plants.

Geri Laufer, the public relations manager at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, has assembled a collection of fifty-six kinds of viburnum and more than two dozen magnolias, along with all the herbal shrubs discussed in the article, in her garden outside Atlanta, Georgia.

White flowering quince can be gorgeous underplanted with white hellebores and white-veined Italian arum.

Further Reading

Coats, Alice M. Garden Shrubs and Their Histories. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.
Dirr, Michael A. Manual of Woody
Landscape Plants. Champaign, Illinois: Stipes Publishing, 1998.
Hillier, Sir Harold. The Hillier Manual of Trees and Shrubs. London: David and Charles, 1991.
Kirkpatrick, Debra. Using Herbs in the Landscape. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1992.
Sackville-West, Vita. Vita Sackville-West’s Garden Book. New York: Athenium, 1968.
Wyman, Donald. Shrubs and Vines for American Gardeners. New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1969.

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  • Jean 1/6/2009 4:27:43 PM

    I need plants that deer don't like

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