Colorful Red Twigged Dogwood shrubs (Cornus) exhibit color during all four seasons! But they show off their best side when the cold of winter sets in! The red-colored stems of the Dogwood are extraordinary even in the most drab, colorless depths of winter!

If your landscape is in a snowy section of the United States, the Red-Twigged Dogwood Shrub is even more extraordinary!

Nature Hills offers many varieties of the dramatic Red-Twig Dogwood in a variety of foliage colors and sizes.

Try the variegated Ivory Halo, or the crinkled textured leaves of Pucker Up!® Dogwood! Lighten things up with the chartreuse foliage of Garden Glow, or the firety stems of First Editions® Cayenne Dogwood.

Those in Zone 2, choose the incredible cold tolerance of the First Editions® Firedance™ Dogwood, or the heat tolerance of Arctic Sun®.

Not only does the Red-Twigged Dogwood provide many foliage colors, but they also adorn themselves with a flush of white flowers each spring that pollinators adore! Typically forming white, flat-topped umbles full of star-shaped florets!

The lance-shaped foliage forms early and lasts right until frost. Often, many types of Lepidoptera larvae use Host Plants for their young! Once these leaves drop in the fall, then the real show begins!

Dogwood Shrubs in the Landscape

Red-Twig Dogwood shrubs are typically used for informal hedges, as screening hedges, and their color makes them fantastic as specimens, privacy groupings, and property-defining rows! Garden anchors and foundation plantings, Dogwoods light up your landscape in every way you need - no matter what your garden has to offer!

Once the foliage drops the brilliantly colored stems stand out in the landscape! Dense enough to remain wonderful screening in the winter, working as snow fencing, and intermixed in shelterbelts and windbreaks to add pops of color when you need it most.

The shrubs can be trimmed into a more structured hedge or left to grow into their naturally tidy form. Their vibrant foliage is almost out-shown by the brightly colored young stems stand out against the snow and drab spring while also filling your late-season planters with colorful seasonal décor and your vases with unique stems.

Looking great planted alone, Dogwoods are more dramatic when you plant several plants in a group. Either way, the native and many cultivars of Dogwood are beautiful additions to any garden! The suckering forms can create their own groupings or thickets politely over time.

Caring For Dogwood Bushes

Ranging from red to burgundy, or maroon, the stems shine best in full sun. Dogwood bushes are easy to care for, and they adapt well to a wide variety of soil types, moisture, climate and pruning. Variegated forms will appreciate more sun to help keep the colorful foliage and the plants uniform.

An established Dogwood is drought-tolerant and adaptable to both cold and hot weather extremes. It is a hardy shrub, and adaptable to multiple soil types including high soil moisture and well-drained clay.

Dogwood shrubs are easy to care for, and they adapt well to pruning. Dogwoods bloom on old wood, setting the flowers for the following year during the summer. So time your trimming in the late winter or very early in the spring.

Thicket-forming Dogwood can also be pruned by removing the oldest stems down the ground leaving the younger thinner stems in place as they have the best stem color. This renewal pruning should be done about every 2-3 years or whenever you notice stems lacking color. Trim suckers to the ground on thicket-forming Dogwood shrubs to keep them tidy if you don't wish them to spread.

Dogwood shrubs are generally deer-resistant and unless they are desperate, deer usually pass them by. If you live in an area with a heavy deer population, from day one spray your shrub with deer repellant and reapply according to product directions. This trains deer to think your shrubs don't taste good!

Vibrant Winter Color & Year-Round Beauty

From spring blooms to red winter beauty, the Red-Twigged Dogwood bush will light up your landscape with ease! Low-maintenance and deer-resistant, there is little you'll have to worry about when caring for these easy-going flowering ornamental shrubs!