Decorative Shrubs with Red Berries

USDA Zones 2 and 3

• Alpine currant (Ribes alpinum) grows to between 3 and 6 feet high. Only the female alpine currant generates red fruits; the males do not, including some all-male cultivars such as Green Mound. The berries ripen in July and do not last into winter.

  Edible red berries are a characteristic of Hahns, a variety of the American cranberry bush (Viburnum trilobum). Hahns has colorful fall foliage that makes it showy and decorative. Its fruit, when left on the twigs, shrivel up in the winter cold on this 6- to 8-foot-tall shrub.

USDA Zone 4, 5 and 6

• By October, the berries of the Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) are red, and they persist into winter on the twiggy branches. The fall color can be exceptional on this shrub, with leaves turning red, purple and orange.

  The spreading cotoneaster (Cotoneaster divaricatus) is a Chinese shrub that features small white flowers in May and June that turn into red berries shaped like tiny eggs. Spreading cotoneaster grows to 6 feet tall and functions as a foundation plant and a hedge.

USDA Zone 7 and 8

• Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) is an outstanding decorative shrub for wet areas within USDA zones 7 and 8, in part because you can create thickets of it. Growing to between 3 and 12 feet tall, winterberry's best feature is the numerous bright red berries that develop on its twigs on the female plants, lasting well into winter.

  The red berries that form on smooth sumac (Rhus glabra) grow in pyramid-like clusters at the end of the twigs on female plants. Smooth sumac also forms thickets if you do not trim back the growth that emerges from its roots. This decorative shrub grows to 15 feet and adds bright fall color from its fruits and foliage to a landscape.

USDA Zone 9

• The pink and white flowers of chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia) yield shiny clusters of red fruits. The shrub grows to 10 feet tall, and the fall leaf color is exceptional, changing to bright red.

  Possumhaw (Ilex decidua) is a holly that loses its foliage, but the orange-red fruits on the female specimens remain attached through winter, unless eaten by wildlife. Possumhaw grows as big as 30 feet high in a wild setting, but it is a shrub when in cultivated form, maturing between 7 and 15 feet.