Slugs and Salal: Pacific Northwest Gardening

Red Huckleberry

Almost every visitor to my garden last summer commented on the quantity and surprising size of the red huckleberries. The slender, lacy-leaved stems of this native deciduous shrub (Vaccinium parvifolium) were drooping with a heavy set of bright salmon-red berries twice their usual size. Red huckleberry is one of the many native plants that dwelt on this forested land long before I arrived, and that I've preserved on the landscape.

Red huckleberry in bud.

Traditionally, a heavy set of berries on native plants is said to be Nature providing for a very long or very cold winter. I'm in the habit of leaving all the huckleberries for the birds. All the coastal aboriginal peoples within the range of the plant ate red huckleberries fresh. The berries were also dried singly like raisins, and mashed and dried into cakes for winter. The juice was used as a mouthwash, or consumed to stimulate the appetite. The red berries were useful as fish bait in streams.

Planting Companions

I've kept these tall, multi-stemmed shrubs as focal points in the garden -- as a contrasting background for hydrangeas, as companion to pieris and rhododendron, as a base around which to display a vigorous species Peruvian lily (Alstroemeria aurantiaca), and as a feathery softener around tall cedar stumps.

Culture and Maintenance

In the never-watered, treed storage area behind the garden shed this shrub has proven to be utterly drought tolerant. A particular delight is the lovely pink coloring of the leaf buds before they unfurl in early spring.

To maintain an open, airy look in the huckleberry clumps I cut or saw out a few of the oldest, thickest stems at ground level every February. At the same time I do a little trimming to maintain the long-stemmed, gracefully arching shape that I like so well in these fine-twigged shrubs, surely one of the most undemanding and underrated of all our native plants.

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