Is your garden missing something during the winter months?
Would you like to have an eye-catching plant in your garden that offers unique color in late fall and early winter? We’ve got just the thing. When everything else in the landscape is fading to gray, snowberry bushes shine with interest!
You’ll find snowberries with green to bluish green foliage, and some varieties boast a nice yellow fall flush, but their leaves aren’t the key feature. Snowberries brighten the cold months with loads of small berries that persist and stand out against the fading landscape. Most plants offer fall color with their leaves, but the color you’ll get from snowberries lasts much longer because their berries persist through the winter.
Derived from native plants, snowberries grow easily here. They’re deer resistant, tolerant of our soil, and can even handle water from Utah Lake. This makes them an ideal option in landscapes all across the valley—something you can practically plant and forget. They truly belong in any Utah landscape as a focal point plant, small hedge, or small border planting.
Progressive Plants provides plant material for popular gardens and even sacred landscapes throughout the Intermountain West. Many of the images of snowberries in this article were shot on the grounds of the Deseret Peak Temple in Tooele, Utah because we supplied a significant number of the plants in this landscape. These gardens feature several snowberries, specifically Symphoricarpos albus, the Common Snowberry, loaded with creamy white berries. Other popular gardens displaying plants from our nursery include Thanksgiving Point, Red Butte Gardens, Conservation Garden Park, Ogden Botanical Gardens, and several more. We encourage you to walk through professionally designed gardens such as this to discover plants that will thrive in your own yard.
Snowberries are available in a variety of sizes. The largest will reach 6 feet tall and wide, and the smallest cultivar in our nursery grows to a petite 3 feet tall by 2 feet wide. Their small spring flowers attract pollinators, but their most stunning feature is the bunches of berries those blossoms produce! From August until late winter, they will grace your garden with clusters of beautiful pearly white or bubble gum pink balls that will hold interest in your garden and attract hungry birds when food is scarce.
Snowberries grow well in full sun to partial shade and don’t require a lot of water once they’re established. They’re hardy to zone 3, so they will do well in high elevations throughout the Intermountain West. They make a wonderful complementary plant in your garden, blending with a variety of trees, shrubs, and perennial plants. Some of our favorite shrubs to pair with them include junipers, drift roses, hydrangeas, caryopteris, and aronia.
Be aware that other plants with "snowberry" in their name, like the edible creeping snowberry, are different species and should not be confused with Symphoricarpos. Birds will devour these berries, but they are toxic to humans. Thankfully, the toxins in the berries are difficult to absorb, so symptoms may be mild. Still, eating even a few can lead to gastrointestinal discomfort, vomiting, and diarrhea. We recommend that you teach your children to admire them with their eyes and even with their hands, but not with their sense of taste.
Discover all the snowberry options available at Progressive Plants!
Whether you want to add creamy white pearls or a soft pink to your winter landscape, there are several snowberry cultivars that will thrive in your yard. Click on the image above to learn more about each of the varieties we have here at the nursery.
Happy Gardening!
