Evergreen Shrubs are crucial in landscape design. They are essential in landscaping and gardening, providing structure, texture, and colour to outdoor spaces. They act as focal points, create privacy, define borders, and offer habitat for wildlife. With their diverse forms and size, shrubs add depth and visual interest, enhancing the overall aesthetic appeal of the landscape design.
Due to their year-round foliage, evergreen shrubs are vital in creating a vibrant and colourful landscape. Their presence ensures a continuous green backdrop, even during winter when deciduous plants lose their leaves. Evergreen shrubs provide structure, texture, and visual interest, creating a more visually appealing and cohesive landscape. They serve as a foundation for other seasonal plants and flowers, providing a consistent backdrop that enhances the overall aesthetics of the garden. Additionally, evergreen shrubs offer privacy, act as windbreaks and provide shelter for wildlife. Their ability to maintain foliage throughout the year makes them essential to creating a vibrant and attractive outdoor space.
In Melbourne, Australia, the climate is temperate and favourable for many plants; several exceptional options exist. To help you select the best evergreen shrubs for year-round colour in Melbourne, here are five top choices:
Camellia (Camellia japonica)
Camellia japonica, known as common camellia, is a species of Camellia, a flowering plant genus in the family Theaceae. This evergreen shrub is known for its stunning flowers and lush foliage, making it a popular ornamental plant in the garden across the region. Its elegant, single or double blooms appear in a wide range of colours providing a vibrant burst of colours from late autumn through early spring. The peak blooming period typically occurs during winter, when other plants may be dormant or less colourful.
The glossy green foliage of Camellia japonica remains attractive year-round, adding lushness and structure to the garden, even during the colder months. The evergreen nature of this camellia variety ensures that your garden maintains a lush and vibrant appearance throughout the year. The plant’s elegant form and lush foliage make it an excellent choice for hedges, foundation plantings, or as a solitary specimen in the landscape. Additionally, their shrub is relatively low-maintenance, requiring only light pruning after flowering.
Lilly Pilly (Syzygium spp.)
Lilly oily is a versatile group of evergreen shrubs and small trees native to Australia. These evergreen shrubs or small trees offer many attractive features, making them popular for gardens and landscapes. One of the standout features of Lilly Pilly is its glossy green foliage, which remains vibrant throughout the year, providing a lush and dense backdrop to the garden.
In addition to appealing foliage, Lilly Pilly plants produce small, fluffy and often fragrant flowers in spring and summer. These blooms are attractive to bees and other pollinators, contributing to the overall biodiversity of the garden.
Daphne odora
Daphne odora, winter daphne, is a species of flowering plant in the family Thymelaeaceae, native to Chine. This evergreen shrub is highly valued for its charming fragrance and attractive seasonal appearance. During late winter and early spring, Daphne’s odora bursts into bloom, producing pale pink to white flowers that emit a powerful and delightful fragrance. These sweet-scented blossoms can fill the garden with their alluring perfume, making it a joy to spend outdoors, even during cooler months.
The shiny, deep-green foliage of Daphne odora remains vibrant and lush year-round, providing a beautiful backdrop to other plants in the garden. Gardners in Melbourne can enjoy the evergreen beauty, intoxicating fragrance and seasonal changes that Daphne odora brings to their landscape. Plant it where you can enjoy its wonderful perfume, such as near a doorway, along a path, near your patio or deck etc. It is also great for foundation plantings or as a flowering hedge.
Bottlebrush – a colourful evergreen shrub or small tree to attract wildlife.
Bottlebrushes (Callistemon spp.) are evergreen shrubs native to Australia that offer appealing features and standout addition to any garden. One of the most striking attributes of Bottlebrush is their unique, bottlebrush-shaped flowers, which bloom in various colours like red, pink etc. The vibrant flowers appear throughout the year but are particularly abundant in spring and summer, attracting bees, butterflies and nectar-feeding birds, adding a delightful touch of wildlife to the garden.
Beyond their eye-catching flowers, bottlebrush shrubs feature dense, dark green foliage that remains attractive throughout the seasons. The foliage provides an attractive backdrop to the flowers and adds texture and depth to the landscape. As the seasons change, bottlebrush shrubs continue to captivate. In autumn and winter, the spent flower clusters may produce woody seed capsules that resemble tiny cones, enhancing the shrub’s visual appeal during the cooler months.
With their evergreen nature, stunning flowers, and adaptability, bottlebrush shrubs can provide year-round interest, attracting wildlife and delighting gardeners in Melbourne’s gardens and landscapes.
Rhododendron a small to large evergreen flowering shrub
Rhododendron is a genus of flowering plants that belong to the Ericaceae family. These evergreen shrubs offer a beautiful backdrop throughout the year, adding a touch of elegance and colour to any landscape. Rhododendrons burst into a breathtaking display of large, vibrant flowers in shades of pink, purple, white and red. Their showy flowers attract bees and other pollinators, enhancing the garden’s biodiversity. The glossy, deep green foliage remains as the warmer months progress, maintaining a lush and verdant appearance.
During the autumn, some Rhododendron varieties may exhibit a change in leaf colour, providing an additional layer of interest to the garden. The leaves may turn shades of bronze, burgundy, or copper, further enriching the visual appeal of the shrub. In winter, when many other plants may be dormant or have lost their leaves, Rhododendrons contribute to the garden’s beauty. Their evergreen foliage remains vibrant and lively, offering a welcome burst of greenery amidst the colder months.
To see Rhododendrons in Melbourne, why not travel out to Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges? The Dandenong Ranges Botanic Garden is home to a staggering 15,000 rhododendrons, 12,000 azaleas, 3,000 camellias and 250,000 daffodils clothed in colour in spring and autumn.
3D Photorealistic Design using Evergreen Shrubs
3D Render Package, will allow you to collaborate your design in real time with one of our experienced and talented landscape designers. Using some advanced software/hardware we can create immediate 3D renders. This allows visual assessment of the design from every viewpoint. It will let you see and understand how all the elements are intended to come together giving an instant serenity.
Our software can create an artificial sun and project light and heat on any given day or time. This ability to replicate the exact angle and temperature of the sun rays projecting on the building prior to construction is why this package is the peoples favourite. With this amount of influence and control over your future outdoor space, its easy to see how this package will drive confidence, clarity and transparency into the build and assure all trades and parties are moving towards the same goal.