For the most interest, you need a variety of sizes and shapes of plants.

Designing an attractive planting around the walls of your house and through the yard is something that most homeowners really want to accomplish. Not just because having great curb appeal is vital to the largest investment most people make in their lives. This is home, your kingdom on earth so making it lovely and interesting is just part of owning a home. At the same time, you want your yard to be low maintenance and easy to care for. After all, spare time should be relaxing and not filled with more work.

Different heights, widths and textures of plants are needed.

You will want some soft loosely shaped shrubs and trees to compliment those that are more tightly packed with foliage. Big leaf plants must balance and accent those with medium and finer foliage. Then you will want different colors of leaves as well, because the result of not taking color into account creates one big blob of plants life. The other common mistake made in selecting plants for home landscapes is having nothing but evergreen shrubs and trees. Variety is the spice of life and should be found in the landscape.

Not many people want to spend weekends shearing their shrubs.

While some geometric shaped plants are wonderful for contrast and added interest, it makes more sense to increase the low maintenance good looks of yourlandscape with careful selection. All plants have expected mature sizes and will not remain the petite life form that you purchased. Planning ahead decreases your spare time work load and increases the beauty of your yard. The idea of it being necessary to place a bush that gets 8' tall and 8' wide beneath a window is absurd. You and this shrub will be at constant odds over the space above the window sill.

Instead of fighting their personality, learn to work with them for the best outcome overall.

Don't pick the wrong plant to fit the space requirements. Whacked up shrubs are not attractive. One of the most difficult spots for every homeowner is the ones where you need something tall and very narrow. Most narrow plant's natural shape will be 3/4 to 1.5 times as wide as they are tall. When you only have 2' between the sidewalk and the wall, planting a 5-6' tall shrub is a real problem.

In these spots the Sky Pencil Holly is exactly what you need.

Here you have the perfect narrow evergreen shrub to create a column of leafy interest without any shearing at all. Better yet, at full maturity the Sky Pencil Japanese Holly will not exceed 2' wide though it can grow up to 6' tall. The dark, lustrous green foliage of the sky pencil holly is attractive where ever you place it. It is tall enough for good height dimension yet short enough to not grow into the eaves or cover the garage lamps. The Sky Pencil Holly is a slow growing upright shrub with a natural shape like a column.

There are many uses in your yard for this compact Japanese holly shrub.

The Sky Pencil Holly makes an excellent linear specimen plant in the center of a ground cover or flower bed. It can be planted in pairs to mark the opening into the back yard or play up the steps to the front door. You will love the versatility of the Sky Pencil Japanese Holly. Every home has a place that the narrow upright sky pencil holly bush can really make a statement.