Top Ten Berberis

With colourful foliage and prolific flowers, there's a berberis that will suit almost any garden situation

- Graham Rice

THERE’S no getting away from it, berberis are thorny – but this, it turns out, can be a good thing. For although you need a stout pair of gloves when pruning, prickles have advantages.

Pros and cons of thorns 

First, thorns ensure that a berberis is a safe place for birds to nest. Also, if you want to deter people from detouring through your garden, then a berberis hedge will do it. However, their thorns cut both ways, as you might say. You need stout gloves when clipping but, more to the point, if young children use the garden they can be scratched badly.

Flowers, foliage and fruits 

Fortunately, there’s much more to berberis than thorns. In spring, there are the flowers like little double bells of yellow, gold or orange. In a few the foliage is evergreen, but it’s the deciduous varieties that provide the most colour - in purple or deep crimson, or gold, plus a few with a pink or gold or green variegation. Many also feature bright autumn leaf colour.

Both evergreen and deciduous varieties fruit generously, in red or black, especially in full sun. Birds enjoy them, and will spread the seeds, so self-sown seedlings may pop up.

So yes, berberis are thorny, but Berberis thunbergii varieties, in particular, have so many valuable features – flowers, foliage, fruits and a toughness – that we would be crazy to ignore them.

6 award-winning deciduous berberis

‘Admiration’ AGM