Shrubs for cottages — 75 photos of growing popular ornamental species with your own hands

To imagine a garden without shrubs is as difficult as a cottage without a garden. While arranging the plot, summer residents plan the landscape and determine which shrubs to plant in the country: whether it will be only ornamental varieties, or there will be a place for fruit-bearing crops, whether it is necessary to fill the space with fast-growing plants, or you can plant unhurried perennials.

There are a lot of questions, but this creative and interesting process brings real pleasure from solving them.

Summary of the article:

In order to facilitate the difficult task of planning a garden, it is necessary to determine its functions. Whether you are going to harvest, or just want to relax in a beautiful garden, your choice in favor of one or another type of shrubs depends on it.

Let 's distinguish three types:

Beautiful flowering plants;
Fruit bushes;
Shrubs with decorative leaves.

Beautiful flowering shrubs

Flowering shrubs are the most popular option for decorating suburban areas. A huge palette of shades and inflorescences of all shapes and sizes amaze the imagination, making you admire the perfection of nature, delight the eye and give a wonderful fragrance.

The Council. To get an "ever-blooming garden", you need to pick up plants with different flowering periods.

Decorative bushes and varieties of conifers are perfectly combined with flowering shrubs, creating a harmonious composition.

Among summer residents the most popular are:

Dogwood. Blooms in early spring with white or pink flowers, its fruits also look very elegant. Loves shade and can grow on many types of soil.

Rhododendron. Light lilac rhododendron flowers bloom in April. Needs top dressing with humus, prefers partial shade.

Forsythia. This beautiful shrub begins to bloom in early spring. Not only the flowers of this shrub look decorative, but also the leaves, for which many gardeners love it.

Japanese quince. The orange or red flowers of the shrub look spectacular, and the branchiness of the bush allows it to be used for hedges. Likes well-lit areas.

Buddleia. Pink flowers strew the branches of this plant and do not fall off for a long time. The bush grows quite quickly, reaching a height of 3 m in 3 years. Another plus is its magnificent aroma.

Chubushnik (garden jasmine). This plant is familiar to all gardeners because of its similarity to jasmine. Its fragrance is simply magical and really resembles jasmine.

On sale you can find a dozen different varieties that differ in the shape of inflorescences and the size of the bush, but the most popular is the classic version with dark green foliage and white flowers. The plant loves the sun and does not tolerate stagnation of water, in spring and autumn it is necessary to feed the shrub.

Fruit bushes

Berry bushes are valued primarily for their delicious and fragrant fruits, but they can also be considered as decorative elements of the garden. Of course, in order for the bushes to bear fruit, they need to be taken care of more carefully, watering and pruning in time, as well as being more attentive to the choice of seedlings.

If you follow these two simple principles, you can achieve a result that will please not only the owner of the site, but his family and friends.

In our latitudes, the choice in favor of the following perennial shrubs for cottages will be successful:

Currant is a berry of white, black or red color familiar to us from childhood. Currant fruits are the record holders in the content of vitamin C, which is so useful in the cold season. However, the bushes themselves need protection from "cold" – drafts and excess moisture. Some varieties of currants can delight with a good harvest continuously for up to 18 seasons.

Gooseberry is a prickly shrub with sweet and sour fruits of green, yellow or red hue. It enters fruiting very quickly, which lasts an average of 25-30 years. Gooseberries make excellent "royal jam".

Raspberry is a shrub capable of self–pollination, resistant to cold, but requiring high-quality fertilizer and irrigation. It grows excellently in the sun, yields about 10-12 years.

Blackberries are a shrub similar in characteristics to raspberries, even more sensitive to frost.

Viburnum is a beautiful and useful shrub with excellent frost resistance, stable flowering, as well as decorative properties. Viburnum requires abundant watering and protection from pests.

The Council. Fruit and berry bushes are best planted in autumn so that they have time to take root before winter. And in the summer we were able to bring the first harvest.

A separate item should be considered decorative shrubs that can give the design of a garden plot an elegant look. They are unpretentious, they are not difficult to grow if you know a few planting rules:

it is not necessary to plant shrubs tightly, the distance between them should be twice the height of the plant;
plants should be planted at a sufficient distance from fences and buildings;
the arrangement of plants with red leaves should allow them to receive sufficient sunlight;
in case of transplantation, in order to avoid damage to the roots, it is necessary to dig a deeper and wider hole;
the soil for plants needs high-quality and appropriate fertilizer.

Now a few words about the most popular shrubs and their features.

Frost-resistant plants

Hydrangea arborea is a frost–resistant shrub from North America. It is easy to care for, the bush is spectacular due to the presence of abundant flowering. In the harsher conditions of our country, the paniculate hydrangea with white flowers, turning red by autumn, proved to be quite good. The inflorescence of the hydrangea resembles a panicle, hence the name. Hydrangeas like acidic soil, abundant watering.

Deciduous barberry is a shrub with excellent winter hardiness and ease of care. The leaves of the barberry are yellow, red, green. It grows well on soils with high fertility, open spaces or in partial shade. You can make a hedge out of it, plant it on an alpine slide. If necessary, the bush is easily cut.

White turf – bushes with reddish bark, emerald leaves with a white border, changing color in the autumn season. Bushes require annual pruning up to the abandonment of stumps.

Thanks to this, the turf will grow in breadth, preserving the attractive red color of the bark. Flowering occurs in early summer. The shrub is unpretentious, tolerates heat and frost, is planted on the back edge of the plot or near the fence.

Spirea grows quite quickly and blooms profusely. There are two types of spiracles – blooming in spring and blooming in summer. In spring spiracles, the branches are strewn with white flowers, blooming once.

The summer version of the plant blooms longer, has pink flowers, collected in spherical or spike-shaped inflorescences. The soil for spiracles does not have to be fertile, the shrub grows well both in shady areas and in sunny areas.

Thermophilic and moderately frost-resistant plants

Boxwood is an ideal option for those who like to experiment with curly haircuts. A low-growing heat-loving shrub with an unusual smell that feels good in the shade.

The action is rough – a shrub with white-pink flowers, unpretentious in relation to the composition of the soil, in which there is no excessive moisture. The action is resistant to drought, diseases and pests are not terrible to it.

The preparation of the plant for winter consists in tightly bending the branches to the ground (in case of frost at - 25 ° C, the buds may freeze). Suitable for picturesque hedges that do not require forming.

Veigela is the most beautiful of the above–mentioned plants in terms of flowering. Requires fertile soil, annual pruning. The distance between the seedlings should be at least 2 m, since the weigela grows greatly in breadth, having an average height of 1.5-2 m.

Flowering occurs in June, showering the garden with tubular flowers of white and all shades of red. Veigela is very beautiful, so it is the best way to decorate the area in front of the house or at the entrance to the garden.

Forsythia – blooms early in spring, requires constant watering and fertilization.

Which plant is better to choose for your own plot – it depends on the imagination, material resources and desires of the gardener. In books on landscape design, you can see a lot of photos of shrubs for cottages, but the compositions presented on them can cost a pretty penny, and the execution will not correspond to reality due to completely different climatic conditions.

The best option does not necessarily have to be an expensive solution. The main thing is to have a head on your shoulders and contact trusted sellers so that the result does not disappoint.