Best four-season color! Spring, summer, and fall usually get all the attention for their colorful flowers, leaves, and fruit. But bold and bright garden color is always a challenge to find during those dark, dreary winter months! Well, let Nature Hills introduce you to Winter Red Winterberry Holly (Ilex verticillata ‘Winter Red’)!
The foliage is lightly toothed and rough, providing a strong presence throughout the year, starting the early spring in bright green, then transforming into dark green until autumn. when the leaves take on yellow fall color. While inconspicuous to us, the tiny white blooms appear in spring and attract loads of beneficial pollinators and bees! A large shrub, this Winterberry Holly is a bold, deciduous Holly, and will not only fill your landscape with great size, and color throughout the growing season, but also has a brilliant surprise each winter too!
Once they do the hard work of pollinating your female shrub, then enjoy the surprise – Delightful red berries!
The flowers give way to little red berries that are revealed like a curtain call when the leaves drop! As the final show of the year – the bright red fruit will remain on the bush all winter and even persist into spring (if the songbirds don’t carry them all away!)!
Winter Red is a female shrub, so in order to get these show-stopping berries, you need to have a male pollinator. We recommend Ilex ‘Southern Gentleman’ which is custom-made for just that! Generally, one male Southern Gentleman Winterberry will pollinate up to 10 Winter Reds, so you can easily have a fence line of bright berries all season long to adorn your winter landscape!
Incredibly winter hardy, this shrub is native to North America and typically found in low-elevation wooded areas, along ponds and streams, and in damp thickets, and swamps.
Planting and Application:
An easy-to-grow, sizable Holly, Winter Red looks fantastic as a tall privacy row or back of the garden hedge planting! Providing a lively wall of green and a refreshing woodland garden feel. The upright, rounded habit makes Winter Red stand out in the shrub border. Your landscape will transform into a Norman Rockwell painting with key placements of these magnificent shrubs
Great along the edge of the woods and as verdant mass plantings, Winterberries are lovely in naturalized settings. Don’t worry about planting in locations on the edges of the property, Winter Red is seldom severely damaged by Deer!
High-impact color year-round, Winterberry will provide four-season interest as a pruned foundation plant or large anchor for your home’s foundation and other planting beds. A stylish, deep-green backdrop of foliage is always welcome to highlight smaller shrubs and perennials.
Not to mention your cut flower garden will be extended well into winter, and no pollinator garden or bird lover will want to be without this buffet for the wildlife! Winter Red’s berries are not only a feast for the eyes, but it is a literal feast for songbirds. This makes your garden the hotspot for your feathered friends when not much else is going on in the garden.
Winterberries are the “Queens” of the fruiting shrub world and those fruit-laden branches are great for decoration in the garden and in home decor. They make instant holiday decorations when a few stems are placed in a large vase or added to your front entry containers to welcome visitors!
With the added ability to grow in wetter soils, Winterberry is oh-so versatile! Use in the low areas of your landscape where water drains, in Rain Gardens, or as an impressive plant at the corner of the house where the downspouts empty.
- Large, Deciduous Holly With Deep-Green Foliage
- Pollinator-Friendly Dainty White Blooms
- Fantastic Display of Bright Red Berries on Female Shrubs
- Requires Southern Gentleman Holly Male Pollinator
- Four-Season Interest & Winter Décor
- Backdrops, Hedges, Privacy & Wildlife-Friendly Plantings
Tips for Care:
Incredibly cold-hardy throughout USDA growing zones 3 to 9. Despite Winterberry Ilex being slow and steady growers, they easily reach around 8 feet tall and wide in the right growing conditions. The key to success is to be sure the soil is more acidic with a lower soil pH or the plants will grow very slowly. For the absolute best amount of berry production and brightest color, your Winter Red Winterberry needs full sun. However, Winterberry will also tolerate partial shade as well.
Thriving in wet soils, Winter Red does very well in any well-draining soil type and is not particular. However, the ability to grow in soggy conditions does set this Holly apart from others! Adapting to dryer sites once established, Holly and all plants benefit from a generous layer of mulch to help retain soil moisture as well as insulate the root system from heat and chill – especially in hotter summer climates.
Deer-resistant, tough shrubs, Winter Red won’t need too much care or fuss to reap the many benefits they provide your landscape. Likewise is the pollinator for this female Holly, the Southern Gentlemen Winterberry Holly imparts the same carefree ease. Pruning, if desired, is best done right after bloom, however at the expense of some of those berries!
- Full Sun or Part Shade
- Any Type of Well-Drained Soil
- Tolerates Wet Soil & Adapts to Drier Sites
- Seldom Bothered By Deer
- Prune After Flowering If Needed
