Privacy Screen

More plant info

Why these four together

A privacy screen works best when it mixes plants. Each of these four keeps its leaves all year, so the screen stays green in January, and each flowers at a slightly different time in spring.

Green Mountain boxwood

Bred at Sheridan Nurseries in Ontario, Canada in the mid-1960s by crossing English boxwood with a hardier Asian boxwood. It grows naturally into an upright cone. Boxwood’s very fine-grained wood has long been carved into combs, boxes and small tools.

Blue Princess holly

Bred by Kathleen Meserve, a home gardener in St. James, Long Island, who crossed English holly with a hardy holly from northern Japan in the 1950s. ‘Blue Princess’ came out in 1973. It is a female plant, and it needs the male ‘Blue Prince’ nearby to set its red berries.

Capistrano rhododendron

Bred by Dr. David Leach, who spent years working toward a hardy yellow rhododendron; he considered ‘Capistrano’ his best. The American Rhododendron Society named it a 2005 Rhododendron of the Year for its Great Lakes region.

Mountain laurel

The only one of the four that is native here. It grows wild from southern Maine to Florida and is the state flower of Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Its flowers spring-load their pollen, flicking it onto visiting bees. The wood was carved into spoons, which gave it the name spoonwood. All parts of the plant are poisonous to eat.

Sources

• Buxus ‘Green Mountain’, World Plants
• Ilex × meserveae, Oregon State University Landscape Plants
• Blue Princess holly, University of Arkansas Extension
• Rhododendron ‘Capistrano’, Chicago Botanic Garden
• Rhododendron of the Year 2005, American Rhododendron Society
• Kalmia latifolia, Wikipedia
• Buxus, Wikipedia