Are We Finally All Yew’d Out?
October 20th, 2020
Back when so many homes had exposed concrete-block walls, the first order of landscaping business was to plant evergreens the whole way around the foundation.
Nothing but yews of various chopped shapes in this house front.
The dark-green, hard-to-kill, soft-needled yew bush usually got the assignment.
Box- and ball-shaped yews are so common around mid- to late-20th-century Pennsylvania houses that it seems as if building codes must have once mandated them.
While lots of aging yews still skirt our foundations, I don’t see as many new ones going in.
For one thing, we have so many other evergreen options these days.
For another, newer homes often have siding, brick, or ornamental stone walls that go the whole way to the ground, taking away the need to hide anything.
Or maybe some people just got tired of everybody having yews and are purposely choosing something else for diversity’s sake.
I wonder, too, if more people aren’t getting the message that yews are toxic.
While many so-called toxic plants can bring on nausea and similar unpleasant symptoms if you eat them, yews are one of the most truly toxic landscape plants. The foliage and red fruits can kill you – if you can stomach enough of them.
The European yew (Taxus baccata) and the Japanese yew (Taxus cuspidata) are the two most poisonous yew species, according to Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Yew foliage also turns more acutely toxic in winter, Cornell adds.
Someone loves yew teacups.
Some animals are more sensitive to the potentially deadly taxine in yews than others.
Horses and cows are particularly sensitive. The veterinary literature has reported numerous cases of livestock wandering off and dying after feasting on nearby landscape yews.
Humans are sensitive, too, especially children, who, because of their lesser body weight, can run into trouble by eating less volume.
Even in the Middle Ages, Europeans knew they could poison and kill enemies by concocting a yew brew.
Shakespeare, for example, wrote that Macbeth made a poisonous drink that included “slips of yew, silvered in the moon’s eclipse.”
According to Cornell, pigs, goats, sheep, fowl, and dogs are also prone to death by yew in fairly low doses.
As fate would have it, one animal that isn’t terribly bothered by eating yew leaves and berries is our No. 1 landscape destroyer – the white-tailed deer.
A giant yew ball in the front yard here.
Deer actually like yew as a favorite winter snack – up there with eastern arborvitae, azaleas, rhododendrons, hollies, and young hemlocks.
That’s another strike against yews if you’re gardening in deer country (which is almost anywhere and everywhere these days).
Yews do have some redeeming qualities.
One reason they took off as such a used/overused landscape plant is that they seldom run into bug or disease issues. They tolerate poor soils, are easily cold-hardy in our winters, and once established, deal with drought better than most plants.
Yews also shear extremely well, which made them a star when it became fashionable to chop foundation plants into green meatballs – or green boxes or green pyramids, as the case may be.
Longwood Gardens shears yews into all kinds of shapes in its Topiary Garden.
You can chainsaw a yew bush back to within an inch of its life, and it just hits the reset button and starts over.
With some evergreens, if you cut them back into bare wood, they never fill back in or they croak altogether.
Not so with yews. You can shorten them, skinny them, or carve them without leaving so much as a single blade behind, and their stalwart backup plan of dormant buds kicks into action to restore the green.
About the only factor that roundly kills a yew is planting in soggy soil.
If you’re thinking about retiring your old yews – or just planning for a few new landscape evergreens, here are 11 alternatives that I like:
Japanese plum yew. Shade-preferring and looks much like a common yew, except deer don’t mess with these (usually). They come in both spreading and narrow upright forms. Like yew, though, the foliage and fruits of Japanese plum yew are toxic when eaten.
Boxwoods. These also come in upright versions, but most are rounded broadleafs that shear well for that formal look. Look for blight-resistant types, including the new rounded NewGen varieties as well as ‘Little Missy,’ ‘Winter Gem,’ ‘Green Beauty,’ ‘Jim Stauffer,’ and ‘Winter Beauty.’ Sun or shade.
Dwarf nandina ‘Firepower’ in fall/winter color.
Dwarf nandina. Colorful and compact, these are increasingly better bets in our warming climate, although a cold winter can tatter their leaves temporarily in winter. Sun or shade.
Blue hollies. These get bigger (six to eight feet or more without pruning) and have spiny leaf edges, but they’re tough, shear well, and have dark blue-green foliage. Females get bright red winter berries when pollinated by a suitable male. Sun or part shade.
Globe arborvitae. If deer aren’t an issue, these are another shearable, compact, rounded option that will do sun or part shade. ‘Whipcord’ is a shaggy five-footer that deer don’t particularly like.
Cherry laurel. Glossy leaves, good drought-tolerance, and spring-time white flowers are three plusses. They’ll also grow in a fair amount of shade. However, deer might get them.
Cryptomeria ‘Globosa Nana.’ This fine-needled, globe-growing, compact evergreen is something different in full-sun settings. Just figure on lightly shearing it each year when it hits about four feet up and across. Deer are unlikely.
Dwarf Hinoki cypress. Instead of an upright yew, try a variety of these bug- and disease-resistant, slow-growing, elegant, soft-needled uprights, such as ‘Nana Gracilis,’ ‘Gracilis Compacta,’ ‘Torulosa,’ or the gold-tinted ‘Verdoni.’ Sun or part shade but sometimes a deer snack in winter.
Junipers. These have stiff needles and come in both spreading and upright forms. They tolerate poor soil, heat, and drought, and deer aren’t fans. Just don’t let them get bigger than you want. Voles and rust disease are possible drawbacks. Full sun.
Leucothoe ‘Rainbow’ in winter.
Leucothoe. A “sleeper” choice, especially if you’re dealing with a shadier, damper spot. Leaves turn color in fall but can tatter a bit in cold winters.
Birds nest spruce. Short and squat, these stiff-needled, slow-growing evergreens seldom need pruning, but they occasionally run into spider mites and aren’t happy in our increasingly hot summers. Sun or part shade. Deer don’t like them.
In case you’re wondering, I’m not fans of the following: azaleas (lace bugs, deer, and intolerant of clay sites in sun); Japanese hollies (high death rate after transplanting); mountain laurel (gets my vote as easiest-to-kill landscape evergreen); inkberry holly (non-uniform growth habit and develops “bare legs” with age); euonymus (prone to scale insects); dwarf Alberta spruce (spider mites); Japanese andromeda (lace bugs), and daphne (picky about site).
See George’s list of Top 10 Landscape Plants You’ll Probably Kill