Native hollies of all sizes and so much more.
What do you get when you cross a professional propagator with a passion for hollies? Heartwood Nursery! Heartwood, just north of the Maryland line in the direction of York and Lancaster, includes a certified Holly Arboretum, a small retail native plant nursery, and loads of field grown hollies and winterberries. The entire 70 acres is also preserved through a land trust, so will never be developed.
Heartwood Nursery is the culmination of Sue Hunter's career in horticulture. Fortunately for gardeners, Sue developed her affinity for American hollies (Ilex opaca) early on. She also was identified as a talented propagator during earlier work for large wholesale nurseries. The results, today, are an inventory of hollies and shrubs that are the best of the best. This is due to Sue's longstanding work so she can now propagate hollies and other plants from the best of her own stock. She chooses plants to propagate based on the best of all attributes. This is why we gardeners are fortunate that, in addition to the mainstay of her business selling to wholesale growers, Sue also has a retail part of her business!
Native hollies and winterberries (Ilex verticillata) are easily stars of Chesapeake native gardens. Both are easy to grow. While both are understory plants out in nature, they can also grow well in sun. American hollies are evergreen, versatile with the exception of growing in moist soil, and provide good habitat for birds. Winterberries can grow in moist soils, feed birds in winter and provide so much winter interest in our gardens.
The Retail Nursery
The small nursery features small sizes of native hollies, winterberries, viburnums, fruit trees, perennials among others and a smattering of ornamental, or non-native plants, too. These smaller sizes are gems. Smaller plants, perennials, shrubs and trees, establish much more readily. If you plant the same plant, one small and one, two to three times larger, side by side, in two to three years, the smaller plants will typically reach the height of its larger counterpart and have stronger root systems. Experts tell us this all the time and I have experienced it anecdotally. This can be crucial in a drought year when it can be challenging to keep newly establishing plants happy. If you have a well established garden, planting smaller plants is also often times much easier as you can plant without disturbing roots of other plants.
Smaller plants I noticed included these hemlock trees (Tsuga canadensis), pawpaws (Asimina triloba), persimmon (Diospyros virginiana), native viburnum shrubs (Viburnum nudum),(Vibunrum acerifolium), (Viburnum dentatum) (Viburnum prunifolium), winterberries and American hollies, of course!
Another big find in the nursery is the highly coveted but hard to find Maryland dwarf holly (Ilex opaca 'Maryland dwarf.') These hollies grow five to eight feet wide and two to four feet high. This one of the few native low growing evergreens.
The nursery has regular, year round, retail hours but as always, please check their website for any changes.
Field Grown Plants
Heartwood has groves of hollies of all sizes. More than that, Sue and team can help you select the absolute best holly for your situation, and you will likely be able to find it in a range of sizes. Sue also doesn't want any of her carefully tended hollies to perish so she will likely ask you what your plans are for planting and care.
Heartwood grows eighteen selections of native hollies and ten of winterberry. I am excited to share this information because finding American hollies in native plant nurseries or garden centers can be extremely hit or miss. Retail customers may visit the fields by appointment only.
The Holly Arboretum
The Holly Arboretum is a great place to compare different types of hollies and see what smaller trees will look like two and three decades in. There are also a number of very mature winterberries which are just gorgeous in fruit.
Heartwood Nursery -- hollies upon hollies and more in a gorgeous setting combined with expertise and a retail nursery. Many thanks to Kathy Jentz of Garden DC - that's how I learned of Heartwood! You can listen to Kathy's podcast with Sue here.
Happy Winter Solstice.
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