Maintaining your yard, garden, and other outdoor areas is an ongoing process. You'll have to mow the lawn, tend crops and reap their harvests, replant annuals, and perhaps switch out certain plants and flowers from year to year.

Shrubs are typically a more low-maintenance way to improve the landscaping around your home. Many varieties are hardy enough that they can simply be planted and left alone.

When choosing shrubs for your home, you'll need to consider a few different factors. These include what function you'd like the shrub to have, how it will look at different times of the year, and whether the soil and climate conditions will support it.

One of the most common places to plant shrubs is around the base of the home. Alex X. Niemiera, writing for the Virginia Tech Department of Agriculture, says plants located here can mask the less appealing look of a foundation or basement windows. Shrubs can also have the effect of softening the hard angles of the home and better integrating the residence into the surrounding landscape.

Shrubs can also serve to accentuate a property line and give you more privacy. Hedges are a common choice for this function, and some varieties are tall enough to block views of the neighboring properties – and their view of you. A green, woody barrier will also be more visually attractive than a fence.

For more extensive landscaping projects, shrubs can help outline paths. Lynn Ocone, writing for This Old House, says this allows you to plant shrubs in such a way that you can direct visitors to your front door, a focal point in your garden, or other destinations.

Ground covers are a good way to cover a larger portion of a landscape. These shrubs are not only visually interesting, but will also reduce the amount of lawn you need to mow.

Some shrubs are considered specimen plants because they are attractive enough to serve as a focal point in your landscaping. Niemiera says others can be used to accentuate a door frame, sculpture, or other feature. Shrubs may also be grouped together in mass plantings.

Naturally, the shrubs you choose should be a good match for conditions at your home. Richard Jauron, writing for the Iowa State University Department of Horticulture, says you'll want to choose a shrub which can tolerate the USDA Hardiness Zone in your region. This will ensure that it can tolerate the weather conditions in your area, especially if you experience extreme cold, drought, or high summer temperatures.

It can be useful to test the soil around your home to see if it can support a particular shrub. Most shrubs do well in pH levels of 6 to 7.5, although some will tolerate more acidity. Well-draining soils are ideal. Lynn Coulter, writing for HGTV, says you'll also want to check a shrub's sunlight requirements to make sure it will get enough light in the area you plan to plant it.

The size of the shrub is an important consideration. Jauron says you should know about how tall and wide the shrub will grow to ensure that it doesn't encroach on walkways, tree limbs, overhead power lines, or other parts of the home. This consideration will also let you know how far apart shrubs need to be planted to avoid overcrowding.

Some shrubs will require you to control their size through regular pruning. Coulter says you should know what time of year this pruning needs to be completed and how far back the shrub should be trimmed.

Make sure any shrubs you plant around the home are properly established. Dig a hole about twice as big as the root ball, but keep the depth roughly the same. Shrubs usually require thorough watering in their first year to help establish roots, so don't overlook this important task.

Visiting your local nursery, you'll find no shortage of shrubs that will grow well in the New England region. You might check to see when the shrubs will be at their most visually enticing—producing flowers, berries, or foliage—to provide a mix of interesting hues in your garden. Ocone says some varieties that work well in the Northeast or eastern United States regions include black chokeberry, bottlebrush buckeye, hydrangea, Japanese barberry, summersweet, and witch hazel.