Nellie R Stevens Holly

With proper care, it can live 50 years or longer. Its durable structure and disease resistance make it one of the most long-lasting evergreens for landscapes and screens.

It grows at a moderate to fast rate, maturing quickly compared to other hollies. Once established, it fills in beautifully and maintains its pyramidal shape with minimal shaping.

Yes - mature female plants reliably produce clusters of bright red berries each winter. You’ll get the best fruiting if a male holly is planted nearby for pollination.

Yes, deer generally avoid hollies due to their tough, spiny leaves, making them an excellent choice for rural and suburban landscapes prone to browsing.

Yes, though it prefers spacious conditions. Use large, deep containers with excellent drainage, and water more frequently during summer. Container-grown specimens make stunning focal points or entryway plantings.

Extremely well. It thrives in hot, humid conditions and maintains its lush green foliage even through long, intense summers.

Yes, it’s cold-hardy and resilient. Once established, it easily withstands frost and freezing temperatures, keeping its deep green color all winter long.

Absolutely. Its dense branching and uniform growth make it one of the best hollies for tall, evergreen privacy hedges or windbreaks.

Yes. It tolerates heat, wind, and moderate pollution, making it a strong choice for urban landscapes and large-scale plantings where durability and structure are essential.

When it comes to spacing there is no right or wrong answer. We prefer to give trees the most amount of separation possible and aesthetically this leads to a prettier looking tree at maturity because they develop naturally wider, fuller and more symmetrical canopies. As far as the tree's health is concerned it will not be affected by how closely it is planted to another tree but the shape of the canopy will become taller and thinner and begin to overlap, which will create a continuous hedge. If privacy is not of an immediate concern and we are just looking to diffuse the view then we could plant the trees where they barely touch at maturity.

For example, we could plant Nellies 14' apart (their mature width is 14') and at maturity their canopies would barely touch or we could space them even further apart than 14' which would leave a gap between the trees. Most of us don't have the luxury of planting trees this far apart and waiting 10-15 years for them to grow together and get privacy. For people that need more immediate privacy then the question to answer is "how long do you want to wait before you have a solid privacy screen?" Most answers that we get to this question will either be immediate or they are willing to wait between 2-4 years before they get solid coverage. Again, there is no right or wrong answer to this question and it is solely dependent upon how quickly the privacy is needed. For example, if a customer is looking for immediate coverage and they are planting Nellies, then we need to find out how wide the trees are that are being purchased and then plant them that far apart. If we find Nellies that are 3.5' wide then we would need to plant them 3.5' apart from trunk to trunk which allows for the branches to touch immediately at the time of planting. If we are looking for coverage in 3-4 years then the spacing would be dependent upon how quickly the trees grown per year in width and what size tree the customer decides to start with. Let's look at the previous example of a Nellie that is currently 3.5' wide. We know that they grow about .75' per year in terms of width so over 3 years they will be about 5.75’ wide and therefore we would space the 5.75’ apart (trunk to trunk) so that the trees would be touching in 3 years.

Yes, Nellie R. Stevens hollies produce abundant, bright red berries that typically ripen in the fall and persist throughout the winter. While most holly species require both a male and female tree to produce fruit, the Nellie R. Stevens is unique because it is parthenocarpic. This means the female plant has the rare ability to develop fruit without being fertilized by pollen, though the resulting berries will be seedless. Although a single Nellie R. Stevens can produce berries on its own, it will produce a significantly heavier and more reliable crop if a male pollinator is nearby.