The Beginner's Garden, Phase 9:

You've cleaned dead leaves and litter off your flowerbed. Now think about expanding your garden ambition. (You can see where we're headed—a tree or two—but not yet.)

A shrub is the next step up in stature, and in woodiness, from your perennials and annuals. You're not going to put this in your flower bed, with its well-prepared soil. Place your shrub in back of it, or beside it, or not far from the path to your front door. By definition, your shrub will be a low, woody plant with several permanent stems rather than a single trunk.

Below are suggestions of some shrubs that did well under tough circumstances—that is, in New York City parks, where they got minimally improved soil, chancy watering, some trampling, and some dog pee. These are not very picky, if you give them the amount of sun or shade they like.

Call or visit your local botanical garden or nursery to ask about shrubs that do well in your area. Think about what you particularly like: fragrance, spring flowers, summer flowers, nice foliage, and fall color or winter interest. A lot of botanical gardens have handy plant lists on their Web sites. Don't forget to think about how big the shrub will be in 10 years.

For full sun:

Aesculus parviflora. Bottlebrush buckeye. With white flowers held upright like candles, this plant gets tall and wide, so don't put it too near a building or window. It's good at the edge of a lawn.

Buddleia davidii. Butterfly bush. Along with fireweed, this was the first flowering plant to return in rubble-strewn London blocks after the Blitz. The summer bloom does indeed attract butterflies. Once established, it can take drought and lots of heat.

Ilex verticillata. Common winterberry. It produces great red fruit when leaves are gone and not much else is happening, and prefers moist soil.

Syringa vulgaris. Lilac. Plant it this year, and it may well be blooming in 3007. (See April "Gardening" column.)

Sun or shade:

Aronia melanocarpa. Chokeberry. The small white spring flowers, great, deep purple-red fall color, and black berries will please your local birds.

Fothergilla. Witch alder. This plant produces white fragrant bottlebrush flowers in May and unbeatable red-orange-yellow fall color.

Itea virginica. Virginia sweet spire. This has fragrant white flowers in spring, but its great attribute is red-purple fall color. Nice low shape, more graceful than the upright fothergilla, with arching shoots.

Viburnum plicatum. Doublefile viburnum. This is one of the most elegant shrubs: amazing white flowers in a horizontal pattern, plus wine-red fall color. Give it room to get wide.

A special note:

Walking through the nursery, you're going to say to yourself, why not a rhododendron or azalea?

These gorgeous plants get a bunch of diseases if they're not happy, and are sensitive to drought. (Their roots grow close to the surface.) If you're willing to be watchful, go ahead. One with very good odds of success is Rhododendron yakushimanum. It comes from the Japanese island of Yakushima, where conditions are tough. There is rain on the island, but there is also strong wind, so the leaves have developed nice fuzz on the underside to slow down water loss. It's a slow-growing, dense evergreen with pink or red flower buds opening to white. It is very important to mulch rhododendrons and azaleas, preferably with something like shredded cedar or pine bark that tends to make the soil acidic.

Planting:

Conventional wisdom used to say make the soil in the hole into a delicious chocolate-pudding colored mix—folding peat moss and compost into the pile of soil sitting there by the side of the hole you just dug. But scientists have discovered that the plants, in a sense, get spoiled. The roots stay circling around in that oasis of soft soil instead of setting out bravely into the hard, cruel world.

Your hole should be about the same depth as the pot but twice as wide as the roots of the plant. You do want to help the plant out by breaking up soil lumps and removing huge rocks.

It is very tempting to want to pull the plant out of the pot by its branches or trunk. Don't do it. You run the risk of breaking a branch, and you could harm the root ball, tearing loose some of the small feeder roots that are most crucial to the plant's future health. Instead, face the pot slightly downward, letting gravity help you. If the plant doesn't slide out (into your waiting hand—don't let it drop), press on the sides of the pot. If that doesn't work, whack the bottom of the pot sharply with a trowel. If that doesn't work, you may have to cut off the plastic pot.

Firm the soil at the bottom of the planting hole. Place the plant in so that the top of the root ball is just a bit above ground level, no more than 2 inches. (The soil will sink a bit when you water.) Here is the fun aesthetic part. Turn the plant, looking for its best side to show off to the world.

Fill the hole in with the soil you dug up, adding it in stages and firming it around the roots with your (gloved) hand. When filled in, you are allowed to tamp it down with your foot. But don't ever push wet soil down with your foot. (It will get too compacted, airless.)

Make a rim of soil about 1 foot out from the plant, forming a basin to catch rainwater. Then, immediately (every minute counts) water gently and thoroughly. Some gardeners put a hose next to the bottom of the plant and let it run, just a trickle, for an hour. As I've said before: Think quagmire. Spread a layer of mulch (we're going to spoil that plant just a little)—manure-based compost or shredded bark—around the plant taking care not to push it up against the stems.

Water a new shrub once a week in dry periods for its first summer.

Please send your beginner's gardening questions to .