I may go this route out of familiarity. My local nursery says soils in our area should be conducive to blueberries. I have jostaberries (currant x gooseberry cross) planted in some other locations already. If I go the currant route, I need to find disease resistant varieties that will not kill my neighbor’s beautiful huge white pines that had red tail hawks nesting in them this past spring. Additionally I could include wintergreen and lingonberry as they should also be happy in acidic-amended soils.
I am considering these as well as spice bush. I don’t necessarily want a monoculture for the area.
There are a couple native viburnum sp that could work. I have begun researching them as well. Arrowwood Viburnum and Northern Wild Raisin are prospects so far.
Mahonia does seem like a cool option. If anything, I’d probably nestle it in amongst other plants to give it a fighting chance. I bet it could survive if I let it grow large enough prior to keeping it outside all winter, but the only way to find out is to try!
Keeping mahonia (and many other evergreens) out of full sun on windy days below freezing…that’s the key, it’s not the absolute coldest temps but desiccation that does them in mostly.
After some quick research, it turns out that Box Huckleberry actually IS a native to Pennsylvania and is a relic of the ice age; typically propagates by cloning itself and is extremely rare. According to the Wikipedia article, the patch found in Pennsylvania may be the oldest woody vegetation east of the Rocky Mountains, somewhere between 8, 000-13,000 years old! The more you know, right?
@Chikn that bit may or may not be the inspiration for my topic title and the extra emphasis placed on the SHRUBBERY! Good luck with the Covid exposure, try to keep a positive attitude with everything! There have been many advances in our knowledge of the disease and how to effectively manage the symptoms since the beginning of the pandemic. Here’s to hoping for a swift recovery for you and yours (or a negative test result!)
I love my Cayuga viburnum.
I planted a 1.5ft bush in 2018, it is now 3.5 ft tall and as wide. It is a handsome, dense shrub but the most amazing thing is the wonderful scent of the flowers. It has good fall color and there are berries in winter for the birds if you plant male and female plants. Hardy to Zone 5. Cayuga viburnum | The Morton Arboretum.
A related cultivar “Compactum” only reaches 3 ft. Some Asian viburnums are invasive.
You might also consider a short evergreen Rhododenron/azalea - e.g., Yagu Prince, hardy to zone 4
On the native side:
NJ Tea Ceanothus americanus might work, although mine look disheveled.
Ninebark is an attractive plant
The evergreen Inkberry (Ilex glabra) - ‘Compacta’ 4 ft x 6 ft; ‘Chamzin’ 3 ft x 4 ft.
Mid-Atlantic native viburnums: Arrowwood (V. dentatum), possumhaw (V. nudum), mapleleaf viburnum (V. acerifolium). Native viburnums aren’t fragrant.
Shrubby St. John’s Wort Hypericum prolificum
Labrador Tea Ledum groenlandicum
Northern Bayberry Myrica pensylvanica
…
I needed a hedge and used Cornus mas. It took 6 years but is looking fantastic. As long as you head low branches to branch more, the low branches stay on the tree. For fruiting shrubs The service berries as mentioned. I also have a contorted quince and it has winter interest with the twisted branching. Slow growing and remains small. Honeyberries look weak in the hot summer and not much of a fall color, but form a nice round ball in the spring. Not all and some time is needed.
I don’t think mine are that deep (as in edge of the bed 5ft from the foundation) but I’m not opposed to adjusting that depth and putting a root barrier around the trees or against the foundation for protection etc. I have a mini excavator at my disposal from work that I plan to pull out the old veg with anyway. Doing some additional digging and fluffing won’t be a problem.
I will check this out! If it’s what I think it is, I want to build a similar site specifically for pawpaws and persimmon varieties!
I am still considering a few viburnums. Anything I pick needs to either 1. produce food for me 2. be pollinator friendly 3. produce food for wildlife to keep the birds away from my other food plants 4. look reasonably like a landscaping specimen at least half of the year, or a combination of the above.
That will be fun. You could put the persimmons between the windows…get your own permaculture bed going. Paw paws grow REALLY slow - at least for me - mine are going on 11, are a scraggly 4 ft tall and produced flowers for the first time this year.
Richard Darke (Tallamy and Darke, The Living Landscape) replaced his foundation yew hedge with this…not human edible, but the wildlife like it.
Alright folks, after some additional time on the forum and the VERY helpful information you have all provided on this thread, I have ordered the following which I intend to plant along the border of our house for 2021:
Eastern side /front yard bed:
-Flowering Quince (will extend the bed and maintain at a 8-10ft height), multiple cultivars ordered. Not year round color but very early blooms.
-Multiple blueberry cultivars (will plan to maintain pH at or below 6 with proper nutrition for these as the “pack mules” of the bed); The red woody vegetation during winter will add color to the landscape.
-Gaylussacia brachycera “Box Huckleberry” as a native evergreen groundcover
-Amelanchier alnifolia “Saskatoon Serviceberry” A shrubby western native that should be easy to maintain at a low height and produce berries for baking or freezing (if I get any before the birds!)
Northern shaded (least visible) bed:
-Aronia Berry (eastern native, healthy smoothie/juice addition)
-Haskap (honeyberries) (northern PA native, should be happy with shade and produce early summer/late spring fruit)
-Currants (disease resistant black and reds, will tolerate shade)
-More Saskatoons (should tolerate shade based on native environment)
-Jostaberry (trialing, may move to more sun but high disease resistance so may just fruit lightly in shade)
-seedling raspberry from a smoothie (corner of the house, gets more sun)
-American ginseng (trying to plant some seedlings, amending soil with gypsum for high calcium to make them happy)
-Elderberry (I’ve collected native cuttings at work)
Western bed (below foundation) of garage and along driveway, less concern with foundation issues and can allow taller vegetation because there is more height to solar panel shading available.
-Pawpaws (various grafted cultivars)
-Weeping Mulberry (Morus alba) training to 8 ft
-Possible tip bearing apple cultivar frankentree
-Gooseberry (multiple, plays nice with pawpaw and mulberry)
South facing bed is SMALL (unfortunately)
-Jujube (SO, Sugar Cane, Honey Jar)
I have lots of apple bench grafts and will have extra flowering Quince that I plan to train to espalier along our future fence line as an outer SHRUBBERY wall. I don’t know if pawpaw or persimmon would take kindly to espalier training, but if anyone has had success with either, please let me know! I will be growing a lot of both and if I can get them wrangled up somehow while knowing better than to plant them too close together (I know pawpaw is more forgiving and will dwarf itself planted close), that would be another step in the process.
For 2022, I’ll likely fill in some gaps in the north bed with Viburnum trilobum (Highbush Cranberry Viburnum) and anything else I discover that might fit in various places.
Andrews
Phillips
Hahs
Wentworth
Redwing
are some of the cultivars.
More compact and heavier croppers than the generic seedlings.
I’m not an “expert”…but know a little.
Thank you very much! That is a very helpful list to start with. I feel your apple situation as well. I have a lot of pawpaw and persimmon grafting in my future, and a few apple and pear trees to multi graft. Only 4 apples left to bench graft though, small victories!
I saw (I am almost certain on this forum) what I believe was a gooseberry, on what I would describe as a tiny trellis, leading up to the wall of their home from their garden bed. The structure was fan shaped, and for the life of me I cannot find the post I saw it in. Does anyone know what the proper name is for said structure, and where I might find the post I’m looking for? I want to train my Jeanne gooseberries to a similar setup.
