Cormaic' Garden - Plants

Garden Layout - Plants - Cotoneaster
This Cotoneaster horizontalis was one of the very first plants brought into the garden. Along with the Jasminium nudiflorum, it has been planted around the soil pipe serving the bathroom, and encouraged to wrap around the pipe in an effort to disguise it. It's almost an evergreen, although it does lose most of its leaves during the winter, and has reached a height of around 2.5m at the moment, and a spread of a good 3 metres.
Of course, the main reason for growing this plant, aside from its tolerance of shade and poor soil, is the swarm of bright red berries that cover the branches during the autumn. Generally, it's a trouble-free plant, although this specimen has been attacked by woolly aphid over the past 2 years. I suspect this is a consequence of its sheltered, often airless, position, rather than any weakness in the plant itself. This pictures shows the plant in summer. Every time I've tried to photograph it with its autumn berries, something goes wrong, and I'm still waiting to produce a decent picture that can be put on this page.