Some of My Favorite Evergreen Shrubs Just Went on Sale at Home Depot – and They’ll Keep Your Garden Looking Good Year-Round

As leaves drop in fall, I always wish I’d planted more evergreen shrubs in my garden to give structure and color all through the winter. From tall arborvitae cones to slender columns of holly and perfect no-prune spheres, evergreens give a garden a shapely skeleton on which to hang seasonal blooms. While I’m lucky enough to have mature yew hedges and an old conifer I’m planning to cloud-prune, I want to add evergreen accents to borders and alongside a path to punctuate my garden design. Globes of green leaves in patio planters are high on my wish list too.

What’s stopped me? One of the basic principles of garden design is to always repeat-plant evergreens in odd numbers – and bying multiple plants gets expensive, fast. But Home Depot must have been listening in to my garden-design dreams because it’s not even Thanksgiving yet and a heap of my favorite evergreen shrubs just had their prices slashed in an early Black Friday plant sale. And frankly, the prices were pretty decent even before they went on sale.

Let’s skip straight to the good bit, shall we?

1. Emerald Green Arbovitae

If you’re thinking about planting a privacy screen or hedge, look no further than Emerald Green arborvitae. It naturally grows into a narrow pyramid, reaching 10-14 feet high but only 2-4 feet wide, so you don’t lose too much yardspace or sunlight but get dense foliage to screen your garden from prying neighbors. While many evergreens fade in the coldest winter months, this variety is well known for keeping its bright, glossy tone year round. Thuja occidentalis ‘Smagard’ puts on about 6-12 inches of growth a year so while you won’t get privacy overnight, you won’t need to spend half your weekend pruning it forever more either. Suitable for zones 3-8.

2. Sprinter Boxwood

While most boxwood shrubs grow incredibly slowly, sprinter boxwood lives up to its name, meaning you can buy a smaller, cheaper plant. And don’t worry that Buxus microphylla will grow too big because it maxes out at 2-4 feet high and wide: large enough to have an impact in your yard without taking over. Sprinter boxwood keeps its glossy green foliage year-round and has excellent resistance to diseases and pests, including boxwood blight. Suitable for zones 4-9, this handsome shrub is easily shaped to create structural evergreen mounds in a border, a low square hedge or appealing spheres in planters.

3. Anna’s Magic Ball Arborvitae

Thuja occidentalis ‘Anna van Vloten’ is a dwarf evergreen that naturally grows in a compact sphere without ever needing to be clipped. With wonderfully textural fan-like foliage, it keeps a bright golden-green tone year-round and grows well in zones 3-8. Anna’s Magic Ball arborvitae only grows to 10-15 inches high and wide and looks delightful dotted through a border. If you’re looking for compact shrubs to boost your curb appeal or want to add some stylish year-round planters to your patio, here’s the easy solution.

4. Danica America Arborvitae

Here’s another dwarf cultivar of Thuja occidentalis that naturally grows in a compact ball shape without requiring any pruning. Danica America arborvitae is a little bigger at 2 feet high and wide and a brighter green, but what really sets it apart is its fan-like foliage that grows in vertical layers. The evergreen foliage is denser than Anna’s Magic Ball, too. Use it to create a smart geometric accent alongside a path or add stylish structure to a border without taking up too much space. It’s one of the best evergreens for containers, too, and suitable for zones 3-7.

5. Sky Pencil Holly

For instant style in zones 6-9, few evergreen shrubs have the striking aplomb of sky pencil holly. It’s a cultivar of the lovely Japanese holly and while it grows 6-10 feet tall, it stays a slender 1-2 feet wide with unusual vertical branches. The leaves are small, glossy and dark green – more like a boxwood than a holly – so the growth is dense, accentuating the shape. So, while sky pencil holly doesn’t boast red berries (though it does grow small black berries in fall), its silhouette provides more than enough drama. Happy in a large planter or in well-drained ground, sky pencil holly looks fabulous either side of a doorway or gate, or planted in a loose line, and is one of the best shrubs for a front yard.

6. Encore Azalea

So far, so green. And while it’s wonderful to have shrubs that bring texture and a year-round skeleton of leaves, some evergreen shrubs also deliver a generous splash of color. And Encore azalea is one of the very best flowering plants to add to your garden in fall. While many azaleas are deciduous, and older varieties only flower for a few short weeks in spring, the Encore series not only keeps its leaves through winter but repeat-blooms all through spring, summer and autumn. It maintains a tidy, rounded shape so requires very little pruning, and there are all sorts of flower colors to choose from. Suitable for zones 6-10, Autumn Royalty has bright magenta blooms and you’ll also find Autumn Lily with white flowers, Autumn Carnation with pink flowers, and Autumn Embers with red-orange flowers in Home Depot’s sale.

7. Gold Splash Wintercreeper

Euonymus fortunei ‘Roemertwo’ is one of those easy wins that every garden needs, requiring little looking after but working hard four seasons of the year. Don’t be put off by the fact it’s a wintercreeper as this cultivar is a compact mounding shrub. Its evergreen foliage doesn’t lose its variegation and revert to green like many shrubs, and thank goodness because the lime-green leaves have lovely gold margins that positively glow on a dark winter day. Adding to the color, Gold Splash wintercreeper boasts yellow fruit that open to reveal orange seeds in fall. Highly resistant to disease, this neat, ultra-tough shrub reaches 18-24 inches high and wide in zones 5-8.

8. Brandywine Viburnum

Okay, so Viburnum nudum ‘Brandywine’ isn’t evergreen but it does look good all through winter on account of the multi-colored berries that cling to the branches months after leaves have fallen. Brandywine viburnum is one of the best berry-bearing shrubs to feel birds through winter as its berries only sweeten once the worst winter weather sets in, providing a valuable late-season pantry for our feathered friends. Those berries provide quite a show, too, starting green then shifting through pink and blue to a glossy dark purple. Hardy in zones 5-9, this low-maintenance shrub reaches 5-6 feet high.