If you are planting a garden this spring around a condominium or in some other small garden space, you may want to consider some of the shrubs that have been developed to grow into a compact shape and size at maturity.

For example, the North American native ninebark, which always used to grow 12 feet high and as wide, now has a down-sized version. It also now is available with a number of varied foliage colors in addition to its original green: maroon, deep red, orange, and yellow.

And our old-fashioned spirea ‘Bridal Wreath’ that used only to be available in the 8-feet-tall-and-wide size, now has a version called ‘Magic Carpet’ that grows just 18-24 inches tall and 24-36 inches wide. It also has a variety of bloom and foliage colors.

Hydrangeas have also been miniaturized, and some good smaller ones are ‘Lavalamp Flare’ and ‘Bobo’.

Even forsythia has a smaller variety, ‘Show Off Sugar Baby’, which is only two-and-a-half feet tall and as wide.

There are also small lilacs ‘Tiny Dancer’ and ‘Bloomerang Dwarf’.

‘Pencil Point’ juniper is a narrow evergreen, and ‘Blue Wonder’ dwarf Alberta Spruce is only 6 feet tall and 2-3 feet wide at maturity.

All are hardy in our zone [6].

This is Moya Andrews, and today we focused on smaller shrubs.