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Garden Heights Features...
Winterberry Holly along with
Red Twig & Yellow Twig Dogwoods
Fall 2004
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Winterberry Holly
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The female, deciduous winterberry cultivar is a large-berried, slow-growing, shrub with an upright, rounded habit. It has glossy medium sized, green leaves that drop in early autumn. This low maintenance, deciduous shrub blooms small white flowers in mid-summer. The female winterberry, as the common name suggests, produces profuse red berries which are extremely attractive in fall and winter.
The Winterberry will take full sun to part shade. It is easily grown in average, medium wet to wet soil. The Winterberry is a great shrub for wet conditions as it is native to swampy areas.
Winterberries are dioecious (separate male and female plants). The female plant needs a male pollinator to produce the attractive red berries which are the signature of the winterberries. Generally one male winterberry will be sufficient for pollinating 9-10 female plants. Prune them in early spring just before new growth begins.
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 Red Twig Dogwoods
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The Red Twig Dogwood is tolerant of a wide range of soils, but prefers consistently moist, well-drained soils. Although pruning is not required, many gardeners choose to remove 20-25% of the oldest stems in early spring of each year to stimulate growth of new stems which will display the best red color. As an alternative to annual pruning, some gardeners prune all stems close to the ground in early spring every 2-3 years to renew. Any loss of flowers through spring pruning is not terribly significant since the small flowers of this dogwood are rather ordinary.
The Ivory Halo (as shown on right) is a tatarian dogwood cultivar that is noted for its compact size, variegated (white-edged) leaves and bright red twigs in winter. It is a rapid-growing, multi-stemmed, suckering, deciduous shrub that grows to a maximum size of 4-6' tall on erect, usually unbranched stems. It boasts outstanding bright red winter stems which are particularly showy against a snowy backdrop and elliptic, medium/dark green leaves which are edged with white. Tiny, yellowish-white flowers appear in flat-topped clusters (to 2.5" diameter) in late spring, with sparse, intermittent, additional flowering sometimes continuing into summer. Flowers give way to clusters of blue-white drupes in summer. Fruit is quite attractive to birds and is generally considered to have as much if not more ornamental interest than the flowers.
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'Ivory Halo' Red Twig Dogwood, with variegated foliage is among the varieties of Red Twig Dogwoods that will brighten up a dreary winter landscape.
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Yellow Twig Dogwood
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As with the Red Twigs, the Yellow Twig Dogwoods (also known as gold-twig dogwood because of its very distinct and attractive bright gold branches) stand out against a dreary winter backdrop.
This is a beautiful four-season, upright shrub that is covered with white blossoms in May, pleasant green foiliage in summer, then giving way to berries in the fall, followed by very attractive and eye catching gold colored stems in winter that are really set off by a snow cover.
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1605 South Big Bend Blvd
Richmond Heights, Missouri 63117
314-645-SEED • fax-314-645-0121
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