A shrubbery, shrub border or shrub garden is a part of a garden where shrubs, mostly flowering species, are thickly planted. The original shrubberies were mostly sections of large gardens, with one or more paths winding through it, a less-remembered aspect of the English landscape garden with very few original 18th-century examples surviving. As the fashion spread to smaller gardens, linear shrub borders covered up walls and fences, and were typically underplanted with smaller herbaceous flowering plants. By the late 20th century, shrubs, trees and smaller plants tend to be mixed together in the most visible parts of the garden, hopefully blending successfully. At the same time, shrubs, especially very large ones, have become part of the woodland garden, mixed in with trees, both native species and imported ornamental varieties.
Rhododendron garden, Sheringham Park, originally a country house garden by Humphry Repton, with many species collected by Ernest Henry Wilson a century later.
"Graduated" planting in a shrub border in Cornwall.
Rhododendrons in the City of London Cemetery.
Japanese Garden in the Tatton Park Gardens, England.
A shrub or bush is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees by their multiple stems and shorter height, less than 6–10 m (20–33 ft) tall. Small shrubs, less than 2 m (6.6 ft) tall are sometimes termed as subshrubs. Many botanical groups have species that are shrubs, and others that are trees and herbaceous plants instead.
A broom shrub in flower
A rhododendron shrubbery in Sheringham Park
Shrub vegetation (with some cactus) in Webb County, Texas.
Blackthorn shrub (Prunus spinosa) in the Vogelsberg