Shrubs give form and structure to a garden and can provide the foil for other more colourful planting. They can be use to great effect to provide shelter in the garden from prevailing winds. They are also invaluable for providing shelter and nesting sites for birds, habitat for insects and cover for mammals such as hedgehogs. If you want to attract wildlife to your garden shrubs are essential.
Planting shrubs requires a bit of thought, bear in mind the eventual height and spread (some of the are small trees!) and try to choose plants which can be allowed to grow to maturity without the need to cut them back with the resulting loss of wildlife habitat.
Quite a few of our shrubs are sold in 9 cm pots making an economical way of stocking a shrub border. Once we finalise our move we'll be potting these on into 1.5 to 3 litre pots so there will be more mature plants available by the end of the year.
