Ilex x meserveae 'Honey Maid'

There are garden plants we come to take for granted after a time. Some plants perform so easily and demand so little that we begin to overlook them; sort of the same way the middle child gets overlooked for the exploits of the eldest and the trials of the youngest. They don't have the flashy blooms of a rhody or the red hot attraction of that "new" plant you've been lusting after, but they are steady performers who always come through. Hollies are often one of those plants; an evergreen standby that, if it wasn't for the red berries at Christmas, would decend into the obscurity of yews and boxwood (to name two others in the middle child category).

Every so often a new cultivar comes along to jog us out of that rut we had fallen into when it comes to these forgotten plants. 'Honey Maid' holly is just such a plant. Oh, there have been varigated hollies before, but they were English hollies (I. aquifolium) and not much hardy north of Washinton D.C. But 'Honey Maid' is a blue holly and perfectly at home from Zone 5 to Zone 8. Add to that the pyramidal form (12' x 7') and put a red berry up against that cream and blue-green variegation and you have a shrub that will stop traffic all year long. But this is a plant that will really come into it's own during the holidays; imagine pruning a few branches to trim the mantel over a roaring fire and you've found yet another reason to make Ilex 'Honey Maid' a part of your garden today!