Cleyera is a workhorse evergreen screen for Alabama yards. The glossy leaves emerge with a reddish-bronze cast and mature to deep green, giving the shrub a polished look year round. Left alone it grows upright and dense, eventually 12 to 15 feet tall but only 4 to 5 feet wide, so it screens a fence line without swallowing the bed.

Plant it in sun to part shade in soil that drains; it sulks in soggy spots. It shears cleanly into a formal hedge or can be limbed up as a small evergreen tree. Water deeply through the first summer, then it is largely self-sufficient.