Holly laden with red berries is a wonderful sight, and sought after at this time of year. Many gardeners who have a berrying plant will cut lengths off, using this to add festive touches to decorations – both for their use, but also to give as gifts and presents.
However one of the most common questions I get asked at this time of year is “Why Doesn’t my holly have berries?” You see we’re not content with having this lush evergreen plant in the garden, we want it all, we want hollies with berries… and sometimes never else will do!
The answer is in Sex, or to be more exact pollination. Berries appear on the female varieties of holly, and the female hollies require pollination from male plants.
In the garden centres Holly are more sold on the colour of their leaf as opposed to their ability to produce (or not to produce) festive berries. You get so many wonderful varieties on offer in the garden centre, some have the common green leaves, some are variegated Yellow & Green, some are Green & White. This mix of foliage colours allows for the holly to provide us with great interest and colour in the garden all year round.
You can go different with Canary holly and its golden berries!
However careful variety selection is needed to ensure you get berries for the festive period. You need to ensure you have at least 1 male for 5 female plants. The variety Silver Queen is in fact a male variety, with striking green and white foliage, and is a wonderful pollinator for the female holly plants – such as Golden King , this is a good green and yellow variegated foliage variety, and when pollinated produced red berries which contrast with the golden foliage.
The way to go with Holly is getting these named varieties, thus you know exactly what you have! It is near impossible to tell a male from a female holly (if you have an unnamed variety in the garden), so if you have a holly in the garden which isn’t berrying I’d introduce a female variety, or you could introduce a self-pollinating variety – such as JC VanTol.
Self polinating JC Van Tol holly
In nature supply normally looks after the demand for pollination, there is lots of common holly found in hedgerows so I’d always lead towards the holly in your garden being a male holly variety if it’s not berrying, so nip out to your garden centre ask for a female holly variety and this time next year you’ll have berries galore!
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