Low Scape Mound Black Chokeberry
Sustainable Landscaping With Native Plants
You all know that here at Lincoln Landscaping we strongly encourage utilizing native plants within any and all landscapes. With habitat disappearing at an alarming rate, you can help provide wildlife with an oasis of the habitat they need to thrive. The native plants that you use can meet the needs, including food and cover, of native wildlife without causing long-term damage to local plant communities. With the right diversity of native plants in your urban landscape, you can provide protective cover for many animals, seeds, nuts, and fruits for squirrels and other mammals and birds. Nectar for hummingbirds and butterflies.
Two new landscaping shrub patents have been granted to Mark Brand, professor of horticulture at UConn’s College of Agriculture, Health, and Natural Resources, for two modified forms of black chokeberry that make the plant more useful for landscaping purposes.
Brand has created a dense, compact form of the native North American shrub black chokeberry ( Aronia melanocarpa ) called UC165. This improved, low-growing form of our native Chokeberry welcomes spring with a profusion of white flowers that turn to nearly black fruit that is a favorite of birds. The glossy green foliage provides a lovely backdrop for the blooms before changing to red and orange for fall. It is totally cute, but tough as nails. It is an American native so it adapts to just about any soil. It is drought tolerant and disease resistant.
This modified strain is much more desirable as an ornamental landscaping shrub because it is smaller, has more abundant clusters of white flowers, edible black fruit, small glossy green leaves, and turns beautiful shades of yellow, orange, and red in autumn. These features make the new form a much more aesthetically pleasing version of the traditional plant that is also easier to manage with regard to spatial considerations.
Black chokeberry plants as a rule are around four to eight feet tin height with a spreading foliage. This new form of the plant is more compact, growing to about two feet tall by three feet wide, so it is more useful for ornamental purposes, screenings, hedges and borders. It is perfect as an accent plant for sculptures and garden decor.
With these innovations, the plant still retains its natural assets, including its ability to grow in sunlight or partial shade and in a variety of soil types, withstand cold temperatures, and require little in the way of maintenance in the landscape.
Brand has also patented another distinct strain of black chokeberry that develops a narrow upright form, called UC166. UC166 is being marketed as an alternative option to create hedges and screens instead of traditional privet shrubs, which are now known to be invasive. Low Scape Hedger grows to five feet tall by three feet wide and is very adaptable in the landscape. It also produces white spring flowers and orange fall color.
At Lincoln Landscaping cultivating the environment is our life and livelihood. It is our number one goal to help our clients create and maintain beautiful landscapes while reducing the impact on the environment. Whether you are interested in landscape design and installation, seasonal color, or hard scape services, or outdoor living areas; we can create for you an environmentally friendly, organic and beautiful property.
Lincoln Landscaping of Franklin Lakes offers complete
organic landscaping, lawn care, turf and property management services.
Lincoln Landscaping “The Natural Choice”
Mike Kolenut President & CEO
https://lincolnlandscapinginc.com
(201) 848-9699
