SHRUBS are out of fashion, according to garden design trend setters in London. Currently regarded as little more than amorphous blobs, I am going against the grain on this one as I have always felt that a well-placed shrub is anything but blobby.
While their importance for screening and windbreaks is generally recognised, they remain an oft-overlooked component of gardens in other senses.

Yet we have a huge palette of shrubs available to us, offering a variety of attributes. Many have dazzling floral displays, such as False Senna (Agriopigano, Coronilla valentina subsp glauca).

A shrub in full flower can stop you in your tracks and steal the show from the rest of the garden for the two or three weeks it is in bloom. Eye-catching foliage can do the same thing, such as the misnamed Heavenly Bamboo (Nandina domestica) - definitely not a bamboo, but a great accent plant all the same.

Others offer strength in their year-round ability to just be there. Come high summer, shrubs such as Mastic (Pistacia lentiscus) and Myrtle (Myrtus communis) can be relied upon to provide much needed green bulk.

Shrubs are also an important part of canopy layering and as such help to protect other plants such as bulbs or annuals that need some light shade or a little coolness. It goes without saying that the shrub layer is advantageous for wildlife and offers excellent hideaways for birds to nest. As such, they are vital both visually and ecologically for connecting that intermediary stage between trees and ground layer. Adding drama and body, they lift the eye upwards and provide variety in height and width.

Over-reliance solely on annuals and perennials will see your garden reduced to ground level in summer.

Shrubs also make a fine frame for many woodland climbers such as honeysuckle and clematis while offering a great opportunity to create some mystique in a garden. A mass of foliage some two or three metres high and wide begs the question - what lies beyond?

And then there is perfume: have you ever stepped out on a cool November morning to breathe in the sweetest smell which seemingly has no source? No doubt it was the unassuming Eleagnus x ebbingei, whose tiny bell-shaped flowers - while hardly flamboyant - make up in scent what they lack in display.

Source : Athens News