Gardening anxiety strikes late at night, when you see in your minds eye a smallish potted hydrangea you bought three years ago… Now big, blocking the way. You spent time pruning it instead of spending time on the garden. Why? Because the pot obscured its real dimensions. The thing appeared to be contained and then nature took over.
Shrubs has nice flowers. Cutesy factor? Typicaly, those are what you buy them for. And then you forget about tag with the final size on it.
Know the Size Before You Buy
Here’s one way to sort things visually: Plants gets sorted into five volume classes, from giants (to fifteen feet) to dwarves (under three feet). How does this work? Simple. A plant get classed according to its biggest dimension.
Is it six feet wide, and only four high? That’s a medium. If it is six feet wide, plan the bed to be six feet wide. Placing that plant in a three-foot-wide space invites eternal haircuts.
Gardeners tend to believe a shrub’s class name is based solely on how tall it grows. Big mistake. An eight-foot-high forsythia may sound doable. But what about its width? Twelve feet across? Suddenly it’s pushing into your lawn space; a shrubby presence crowding everything else.
If width or height exceed a certain threshold, as indicated on the chart, the shrub go up a class. And this make a difference: It determines the space required before dig day. Don’t try planting something big into a small bed and hope it fits. The shrub isn’t going to shrink to suit the box. It’ll just expand to fit.
The design has to be thought out in layers. Large plant go in the back; they need space and deep planting beds. Medium-sized shrubs create volume for the middle. Smaller stuff up front adds details. The very small (dwarfs) on the pathway’s edge frame the garden but don’t block it. Following that sequence avoids taller things shadowing shorter ones. Each shrub get an opportunity to show its shape.
Break the sequence? You get a jumbled mess with nobody happy.
And what about pace of growth? Will you have time to change your mind, depending on whether they grows fast or slow? Shrubs that gets twice their size within a couple of seasons (like forsythia and buddleia) will do so faster then slower ones (such as boxwood and holly). No matter how much you prune, they has a certain eventual size, which is genetically determined. You can prune a lilac into a small shape, but you’re battling its nature each spring. Better to of planted the proper size shrub in the appropriate bed in the first place.
Before heading off to the nursery, take out the measuring tape and measure how wide your bed is. It is not about what size the pot is. What’s the space? Use the small and dwarf class for a three-foot-wide bed, or use the large and giant classes if yours is a deep border. That’s the test that will save you years of frustration. It transforms gardening from a struggle into a collaboration. You don’t have to fight the bulk in order to enjoy the blooms. The space comes first, not the seedling.