Berried Shrubs and Trees

 Marilyn Young is the Horticulture Assistant at Wave Hill.

With the ideal of a garden as a year-round pleasure, it may be easy to delight in summer, but gardeners may be less certain how to sustain interest and color from fall through winter. There are lessons in the Wave Hill landscape to remedy this. All about the gardens and grounds, summer flowers give way to seed-bearing fruits as the warmest season falls away to autumn. Colorful berries are part of the regenerative process of nature and a good way to enliven the garden as winter comes. Feeding the birds, who contribute by digesting the protective shell and then doing a wonderful job scattering seed, provides an added treat.

Begin the berried treasure course in Wave Hill’s parking lot with the Pyracantha ‘Lo Boy’, commonly known as firethorn. Its thorny stems and brilliant orange berries persist almost all winter. In the shrub border by the entrance are two examples of a favorite berried shrub: the winterberry Ilex verticillata. The cultivar ‘Christmas Cheer’ was planted almost 30 years ago, and is paired with the similar ‘Winter Red’. The leafless branches of these deciduous hollies, covered with red berries, make a striking display in a snowy landscape. Three additional cultivars of the winterberry are planted in a colorful array in the semi-circular shrub border before Glyndor House. On the southeast corner of this house, the commanding presence of a pair of tall evergreen Ilex opaca are glorious as their berries ripen to a  bright red against the shiny, green leaves.

Staffperson Betsy Ginn took both shots here at Wave Hill this winter. These lustrous yellow beads are Ilex opaca ‘Princeton Gold’. Look for them along the walkway between Wave Hill’s Perkins Visitor Center and the T.H. Everett Alpine House.

Now make your way north past the Perkins Visitor Center. Tucked in around this brick building are several Callicarpa dichotoma and C. bodinieri cultivars. Commonly called beautyberry, their delicate amethyst berries line the branches like clusters of small jewels. Planting several shrubs together in a small group is recommended to ensure cross-pollination and plentiful fruit. Also located here are favorites of Director of Horticulture Scott Canning: a trio of Viburnum nudum ‘Winterthur’ graces the Perkins Visitor Center; in the fall, their lustrous leaves turn red-purple, and their lingering fruits ripening to a dark blue hue.

Across the way to the left is the Viburnum bed. The border is usually alive with twittering birds sheltered and sustained by this stately group of shrubs. Viburnums are attractive in flower, in fruit and in autumn, when the leaves light up with fall colors. The red berries of Viburnum setigerum and V. dilatatum provide a veritable bird buffet.

Rosemary Verey, having seen the red berries of the Idesia polycarpa tree here and other places, notes in her volume The Garden in Winter that “bunches of berries were spectacular against a clear-blue winter sky.” These beauties can be found between our Aquatic Garden and the Shade Border.

Peppered about the Perkins Visitor Center, the Wild Garden, the Shade Border beyond the Aquatic Garden and the Herbert and Hyonja Abrons Woodland are several varieties of hollies, as well as viburnums, spice bushes and shadbushes. One place to search out berried shrubs is the area below Glyndor House—the Elliptical Garden and its adjacent slope with plantings of bayberries (Myrica pennsylvanica), winterberries and the Prunus maritima, commonly known as the beach plum.

This afternoon after a light snow, I took a walk up to the pergola that surrounds the Aquatic Garden, now closed for the season. The path heads around and then down a long corridor lined with several Euonymus japonicus ‘Chollipo’, festive with their variegated creamy yellow and green leaves and lovely little orange berries. This evergreen-lined walkway leads to a grand, red-berried Ilex x aquipernyi next to a pair of our older Idesia polycarpa, trees full of bright fruits the birds don’t seem to like.

There are many more shrubs and trees bearing berries throughout the grounds at Wave Hill, too numerous to mention them all here. Once you start seeking berried plants you will find them often. You may begin to enjoy this part of nature’s process even more than their flowering moment, and welcome some berried treasures into your own garden.

Bibliography for Suggested Reading:

Clarke, Ethne. Autumn Gardens. San Francisco: Soma Books (an imprint of Bay Books & Tapes). 1999.

Kingdon-Ward, F. Berried Treasure. Subtitled Shrubs for Autumn and Winter Colour in Your Garden. London: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited. 1954

Verey, Rosemary. The Garden in Winter. Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown and Company. 1988.

Wilder, Louise Beebe. The Garden in Color. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1937.

Gala Planning Leafs Out!

Stephanie Ehrlich is Special Projects and Events Producer at Wave Hill.

As the in-house producer of Wave Hill events large and small, I am really looking forward to the upcoming Spring Gala. The Gala Committee, chaired by the ever-stylish Janet Mavec, has dreamed up an event that is sure to inspire. Working with Michelle Rago they’ve devised a tree-inspired design to delight guests and celebrate our phenomenal tree collection. I can’t wait to see it. And I am particularly looking forward to dinner! Prepared by our longtime partner Great Performances, the food is locally sourced where possible and sure to be delicious. The hors d’oeuvres were incredible at the tasting. My favorites: Medjool dates stuffed with walnut pesto and wrapped in bacon; Szechuan seared scallops on red curry rice cake; Corn fritters with spicy red pepper coulis. Yum!

 

We’re trying something new with attire, too. We’ve asked folks to dress formally, but to wear green or be ‘green’. I’m hoping the ladies wear vintage cocktail dresses. And maybe someone will carry granny’s Whiting & Davis chain mail purse from the 20’s. But that’s just me!

 

Today, I’m off to the printer to see the invitation ‘on press’ – I love going to the print shop to see the printers mix colors to match our concept (and the PMS color we’ve chosen!). We’ve had a bit of an adventure with this invitation. The idea is to use a tree illustration created by the inimitable Maira Kalman. Kalman painted a joyous map/mural of Wave Hill a few years back; it’s chock-full of happy Wave Hill images like bunnies and children dressed as bees, and our tree collection. It’s on display in the Perkins Visitor Center, where it never fails to cheer me up. We zeroed in on her version of the Copper Beech and have been using it as part of our Year of the Trees logo. For the Gala invitation, the tree stands alone. Since it’s the Copper Beech, we thought it would be fun (and cost-effective) to use one ink color. The color we chose is this deep burgundy. Gorgeous. But, when we saw it on the ‘proof’ (that’s what the printer sends to confirm details) it looked like pure autumn, not spring. Ugghhh… So, in true Wave Hill fashion, lots of folks got involved to make it work, from Scott Canning, Director of Horticulture to Laurel Rimmer, Assistant Director of Public Programs (and a horticulture pro as well). With input from Jennifer McGregor, our Senior Curator, as well as our PR people, we switched gears and chose a lively green. Fingers crossed that it comes out well!  Wanna join us?

 

 

 

 

Here's a snapshot of the panel showing off the drawing of our gorgeous beech

 

 

 

 

 

Look for the copper beech in the lower left foreground of this snapshot of Maira Kalman's whimsical "map".