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For a positive resolution for the new year, consider adding inkberry to your garden.
Inkberry’s evergreen leaves and relatively compact form make it an excellent substitute for boxwood and Japanese holly. Compared with these non-native shrubs, the leaves of this native holly are slightly longer and shinier, and the overall plant has a fresher and more winsome appearance.
As William Cullina writes in Native Trees, Shrubs and Vines, inkberry “has a certain billowy, mounded character that is wild yet formal at the same time.”
The straight species, Ilex glabra, can grow up to eight feet tall, but cultivars such as “Compacta” and “Shamrock” will top out at five feet.
Moreover, inkberries are not difficult. They prefer full or part sun but can handle shade. They like moist soil and therefore supplemental watering during droughts. Even so, the Native Plant Trust says they are drought tolerant. In the wild, the Missouri Botanical Garden database notes, inkberry “is most commonly found in sandy woods and peripheries of swamps and bogs” along the coastal plain from Nova Scotia to Florida and the Gulf Coast west to Louisiana. Here on the Cape, we've got the "coastal" and "sandy woods" requirements covered.
Like other hollies, inkberry shrubs are either male or female. Both sexes produce inconspicuous white flowers in May beloved by honeybees, but only the females produce the small black berries in the fall that give the species its name, and only if a male is nearby. Birds, especially robins, eat the berries in the winter.
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