There are evergreen, deciduous and wintergreen shrubs. Flowering conspicuously or remaining discreetly in the background, they enhance the landscape with their existence. However, how can shrubs be combined or which plants are suitable for combining with them?
How can shrubs be successfully combined?
To successfully combine shrubs, you can coordinate flower colors, foliage colors, location requirements and growth heights. Suitable companion plants include ornamental grasses, bulbous flowers, golden nettle, fairy flowers, purple bells and lady's mantle.
What factors should you consider when combining shrubs?
In order to emphasize or even complete the basic nature of shrubs, it is recommended to consider the following aspects when combining:
- Foliage color: green, yellow, red or blue-green
- Flower color: white, yellow, pink, violet, red or orange
- Location requirements: sunny to shady, well-drained soil
- Growth height: up to 10 m
When combining shrubs that primarily impress with their foliage, you should pay attention to the foliage color. Here you can create spectacular contrasts or create tone-on-tone compositions.
Flowering bushes are attractive when combined with other flowering plants. However, take the flower color into account.
It is also crucial to take the location requirements and growth height into account in the planning. The companion plants should harmonize with this.
Combine shrubs in beds or in pots
Flowering shrubs such as elderberry, lilac, pipe bush, forsythia and dogwood are wonderfully expressed in combination with bulb flowers and perennials, insofar as they have similar location requirements. Grasses also often blend picturesquely into the presence of flowering bushes. Shrubs that intoxicate with their leaves or fruit decorations can be beautifully showcased with roses and other eye-catching flowering plants.
These plants go wonderfully with most shrubs:
- Ornamental grasses such as miscanthus, pampas grass and riding grass
- Bulb flowers such as daffodils, snowdrops and tulips
- Goldnettle
- fairy flowers
- Purple bells
- woman's coat
Combine forsythia with daffodils
Although the forsythia exuberantly displays its yellow flowers in spring, it is completely worthless for the bee world. It is therefore recommended to plant them with nectar-rich plants such as daffodils. They match the forsythia due to their yellow flower color and their location requirements.
Combine buddleia with pampas grass
A pretty team is formed from the buddleia and the pampas grass. While the buddleia presents its flower spikes until autumn, it is visually emphasized by the proximity of the pampas grass. The pampas grass surrounds the flowering bush with its bristly fronds and benefits from its color.
Combine shrub rose with lady's mantle
With its size, the shrub rose is ideal for being planted under lady's mantle. This creates a partnership from which both sides benefit visually. Lady's mantle goes particularly well with red and pink shrub roses, which it contrasts delicately from below with its yellow-green flower stars.
Combine shrubs as a bouquet in the vase
Some flowering bushes are well suited to cutting off individual branches during flowering and draping them in a vase. These include, for example, the branches of pussy willow, forsythia, lilac, tree peony, azalea, fragrant jasmine and black currant. The following plants fit beautifully into a bouquet with branches like this:
- Early bloomers such as tulips, hyacinths and daffodils
- Ornamental grasses such as diamond grass, feather grass and pipe grass
- Ranunculus
- Roses
- Storksbill
- Aquilegia
