Shrub · North Texas care guide
Elaeagnus pungens
Nursery Pro tip: Silver-backed leaves, fast, fragrant in October, and nothing kills it. Big screen fast.
Silverberry — a fast, bulletproof evergreen with olive-green leaves speckled silver-brown underneath, and tiny fall flowers you will smell from thirty feet before you ever find them. Grows 8–12 ft in a hurry and throws long wild shoots, which is either its best or worst trait depending on your plans for it.
Full sun to part shade, any soil, any exposure — salt, drought, wind, clay, none of it matters. Give it room, 6 ft apart for a screen, and don't put it in a tidy foundation bed.
Any season. Hole twice the pot width, ball at grade, native soil, Root Stimulator, mulch.
Weekly the first summer; after that you can forget about it.
Never needed — it fixes its own nitrogen.
Cut the long whips back to a joint inside the plant any time they shoot out. Twice a year keeps it respectable; it also takes hard renewal pruning in late winter.
Its own vigor. Occasional dieback on a branch, which you simply cut out. Essentially pest-free.
Fast informal screen or bank cover where nothing else will grow. Mix with wax myrtle and eastern red cedar along a back fence.
Written for Rockwall's black clay, heat and winters by the Landscape Source team. Every yard is different — bring a photo by, or ask LS-Ai, and we'll tailor it to your spot.