Garden shrubs – Holly

As everybody knows, holly plants have attractive berries and shiny, evergreen leaves offering year-round colour and interest – and they make a good burglar deterrent when planted as hedges or under ground floor windows!. The berries are ideal for attracting wildlife and holly has always been a popular Christmas decoration. But the good news doesn’t end there, holly plants are low maintenance too!

There are a couple of trick aspects to holly – to begin with, when choosing plants for your garden, this is one of the plants that it is best to buy when they are very young, as mature plants don't like being transplanted and it’s often the case that a three year old holly and a year old holly – when planted out together – will be the same size at the end of the fifth year, because the three year old holly won’t grow at all for a couple of years. Look out for green main stems which tells you the plants are juvenile, brown wood signifies more maturity. Holly can tolerate a wide range of soil conditions, but prefers well-drained soil. While green holly can grow in sun or shade, the variegated varieties are better in the sun or semi-shade at most.

Prune in late spring, early summer to maintain shape and make sure you prune out any wholly green-leaved branches on variegated plants. Trees respond well to hard pruning or even pollarding. If the plant produces few or no berries, it's probably because the plant is male, or, less likely but still possible, a female plant that hasn't been pollinated by a male. A poor show of berries could also be due to cold winds and wet periods during flowering, which deter insects from pollinating the plants.

Holly photograph by dan4th, used under a creative commons attribution licence

 

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