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Simply Gardening
by Doug Green
Hollies American and English

Jan. 4, 2000 -- While walking around my yard this morning, I was reminded how fortunate we are to be able to grow the North American holly Ilex verticillata or Winterberry. This shrub is a winner in the fall and winter landscape with its bright red holly berries. It is in the same plant family of the more familiar English Holly but where the English Holly is not reliably hardy or capable of forming berries in our USDA zone 4 garden, the Winterberry is rock-hardy. I was reminded of this last weekend when out on a walk with friends and we passed a wild form, standing in a ditch full of water but covered with delightful red berries. Our friends gathered a few branches for Christmas decorations and we envied them as our own bushes, while berry covered, are too small to cut. Or, I think they’re too small to cut and won’t allow the decorating members of our family to take a pruning shear anywhere near them.

In fact, anyone who does cut the Holly bushes should be aware that there is a great deal of folklore surrounding this plant. It is indelibly associated with the New Year traditions to be sure but whether this is because of the prominent berries or the fact that the leaves are easy to draw is not clear. What is clear is that it is unlucky to have Holly plants in the house at any other time but Christmas and while taking a few snips of the plant for decoration is allowed, cutting down an entire bush is seen as decidedly bad luck. Not only that, but old-time lore has it that you had better not toss the holly sprigs into the fireplace at the end of the season as this too will bring poor fortune. Compost them or dispose of them but don’t burn them.

Our native shrub, so decorated right now, is a fine large shrub for most garden areas. In the average garden, this plant will grow to between 6 to 10 feet in size and width although larger specimens have been recorded. It is quite adaptable to wet, swampy regions (as I noted when I saw our walk specimen sitting in the ditch) and loves a slightly acidic soil. It does not seem to mind either sandy or clay soils and does equally well in full sun or part shade. If you want to grow a perfect specimen, add lots of organic matter to the soil and top the compost up every spring over top of a deep mulch. It has a very deep green leaf but no fall leaf colour to speak of; its berries are colour enough. Its shape is oval so it brings a welcome relief to all the vase shaped shrubs in the landscape and while it starts slowly, it will grow into an impressive shrub within a few short years. I want to emphasize this. Our plants have been in a dry sandy area for three years now and they are just starting to break the three foot height barrier. I expect them to start shooting up this year following the old adage: they sleep, they creep, they leap.

Winterberry is quite hardy, ranging from USDA zone 3 right down to zone 9. This is one plant that knows no boundaries. And other than a few fungus spots or powdery mildew, it is disease resistant. Think the same hardiness and disease resistance as lilac - although Winterberry will set fruit in warmer areas that lilacs just sulk through. There is one catch to successfully growing this plant. You need both male and female plants if you ever want to see those red berries. So, when you go to the garden centre, ensure you bring home two different sexes. When you do plant them, consider that one male will handle several female plants (now there’s a subject for some wishful thinking) and they look good planted in a mass planting or a wild garden. If you have a pond-side setting, this is a perfect shrub.

There are some wonderful cultivars out there that you might pay attention to finding. ‘Afterglow’ is a dwarfish form, reaching only 3 to 6 feet tall with orange-red fruit. ‘Appolo’ is a good form, especially if paired with the ‘Sparkleberry’ - a good red fruited female. ‘Autumn Glow’ is an excellent bright red fruited form that also has some fall colour in the leaves - a bright orange colour. It might be hard to come by but do look for it. ‘Harvest Red’ also has red berries but a deep purple fall foliage colour. ‘Nana’ is another dwarf form about 3’ tall. Perhaps the most commonly available clone is ‘Winter Red’ - a dark green leaved form which becomes bronze in the fall. The berries on this clone persist longer into the winter than any other form and it bears extremely heavy crops even as a young plant. One of our females is a ‘Winter Red’ and I can recommend her highly.

For those of you with a green thumb, I note that if you purchase a pair, the plants propagate fairly readily from softwood cuttings taken in June or early July. These cuttings do like bottom heat and high humidity during rooting but success is not all that difficult. With a bit of attention to details, you can propagate your own and create a stunning display around that wild bit of property you own. So, maybe you can’t grow English Holly, but there is no reason why you can’t have those wonderful berries on your table at this time of year.

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