Shrubs can be favorite components of your landscape design. Though they require little care, shrubs provide beauty throughout a season or the year around.

The term shrub is often used to describe a multi-trunked woody perennial plant that is shorter than a tree. The definition is imprecise because the list of plants included is vast and varied.

Shrubs fall into three general categories. Narrow-leafed evergreens are called coniferous (having cones). Many are pyramidal in shape. Pines, yews, and junipers belong to this group. Broad-leafed evergreens include the many different rhododendrons, along with the hollies, boxwoods, mahonias, and others. Some are evergreen (keeping leaves year-round) only in the South. Third are the deciduous shrubs (those losing all their leaves once a year). Many are flowering.

Less expensive than trees but more expensive than many annual and perennial flowers, shrubs are ideal in a progressive landscape design, the kind where a little is added each year over three to five seasons. The first year might call for foundation plantings; the second, for privacy screens or hedges. The third year might mean a planting to separate house from street, and the fourth year may be time to enclose the flower garden and add a showy flowering shrub to fill in any bare spots in a border.

Although the eye-catching beauty of a flowering shrub may be the perfect choice for some parts of your yard, consider a shrub's other features as well; the shrub may spend most of the year without blooms. Other seasonal rewards are the autumn color, decorative fruit, and colorful bark.

To see our entire selection of shrubs, click here:  Complete List.