Juniper Shrubs – The Low Maintenance Landscaping Plants

Junipers are found with wide range of sizes and shapes with wonderful foliage beauty; due to their resilient, soil-friendly, and tolerant nature, Juniper trees, shrubs, and bushes are one of the first choices of gardeners for creating a spectacular natural landscape.

Juniper Shrubs – Great Impact, Little Care

Juniper is a popular gardeners’ choice and is found in multiple forms; the most common variants are Juniper shrubs, bushes, and plants. These evergreen plants belong to conifer family and are extremely drought tolerant, hence, as a whole these trees need minimum watering to grow and to sustain. As these bushy plants are available with wide variety of shapes and sizes, these are mostly used for foundation planting, ground cover, mass plantings, and hedges, etc. Common juniper shrubs varieties areJuniper Communis Sentinel – a dwarf form of Juniper with bluish green leaves.Juniperus communis Compressa – the shrubs are unique with silver bluish line on the leaf top.Juniper Communis var. Depressa AmiDak – this variety of juniper comes with dark shaded blue-green leaves.Juniper Communis Moundap – it is an evergreen juniper variety with awl shaped, silver-blue leaves.Rocky Mountain Juniper (Juniper scopulorum) – is also known as Colorado Red cedars.Chinese Juniper, (J.chinensis) – used for making hedge, ground cover, foundation planting.

Juniper Plants – Versatile Garden Beauty

Juniper plants are extremely versatile in nature and these plants retain its lush beauty around the year, regardless the season. Although steady and tolerant in nature, Juniper trees are best maintained on maintaining a few rules.The soil for the juniper must be of well-drained type otherwise, the plants might get fungus attack. Acidic soil type is best suited for these plants.It is better to plant juniper trees maintaining a distance between each of them; otherwise, due to overcrowded bushy effect the growth rate of juniper may hamper badly.Pruning is not frequently required for Juniper care; however, occasional pruning of the dead branches and dry leaves may keep pests away from these plants’ dense foliages.Bonsai made of Juniper plants should be kept under half-shady, half-sunny spot; otherwise, the shape of the tree may get spoiled.

Juniper Bushes – Pruning Basics

Although juniper tress are low maintenance and hardy plant, the general growth rate of juniper bushes stands consistent and steady if skilled pruning is done at least once in a year.Juniper trees are comfortable with restricted and light pruning; heavy pruning hampers their natural growth rate. For Juniper trees, mainly heading and thinning methods are used and these pruning techniques help in maintaining its bush-like features better.Dead, weak or diseased branches of juniper bushes are not good for its over all health. However, it is never wise to trim off all the decayed branches of a juniper shrubbery at a time. Depending on the maturity of the bush, maximum 4-5 branches can be pruned safely at one attempt during one season.In every three-year interval a bush of juniper demands heavy pruning; the meticulous trimming method rejuvenates the over all plant growth.