- Shrubs live a long time once they are established in a garden. You can prune a shrub to fit any landscape using simple tools like hand-held pruning shears and a pair of garden gloves. Then strip the bark from the lowest inch of the branches you pruned, dip them into a rooting compound, plant them in moist sand, and within 6 weeks the cuttings will have grown roots and be ready to place into the ground. Shrubs mature quickly and will soon delight you with their blossoms and foliage.
- Shrubs come in a variety of sizes. An example of a low shrub is the Japanese flowering quince, which reaches a mature height of just 6 feet. This shrub has wide open pink flowers in the early spring and fruit in the fall. Euonymus, with its brilliant red fall foliage, is a medium-size shrub, and grows to about 10 feet tall. Lilacs and redbuds are both tall shrubs and reach 20 or more feet in height.
- Besides considering a shrub's height, gardeners select their shrubs based on the conditions in the garden. Some shrubs grow well in shade, such as chokeberry, hydrangea and witch hazel. Others are hardy enough to tolerate very cold winters. These include winterberry, dogwood and hawthorn.
- Color is another factor that gardeners consider when choosing flowering shrubs. Forsythia is the most familiar of the yellow shrubs. Spirea and mock orange produce white flowers. Azaleas and roses come in nearly every color, while lilac and weigela produce purple, lavender or white blossoms. Many of these flowering shrubs are extremely fragrant, too. Of course, there are also shrubs that produce edible fruit like blueberry, cranberry, elderberry and cherry.
- Plant new shrubs either in the spring before they get their leaves or in the fall about a week after the leaves fall off. Dig a large enough hole for the entire root ball to have room to spread out. Water it well and provide a mulch that is rich in organic material to encourage the shrub to thrive. Then prune it once it has become established to remove any dead wood from the middle of the shrub and to keep it the shape that you prefer. Pruning should not be done until spring-flowering shrubs have finished blooming because these shrubs bloom on the wood that grew during the previous summer.
