In addition to their beauty, flowering shrubs give much needed structure to gardens. They provide a vertical backdrop for other perennials and serve as a transition layer from trees to smaller plants. They work equally well as specimens, in groups or as hedges.
Plant them in spring or fall and though most prefer full sun, there are several that will thrive in part shade. Be sure to read the cultural instructions before planting. Shrubs are easy to grow and they will provide years of beauty in your landscape.
Now I’m going to share a secret with you. Even though neglected shrubs will flower, if you want loads of beautiful blooms from your shrubs, you have to be willing to do a hack job on them. That's right. In gardening lingo we call it pruning and it is the key to abundant flowering. As a general rule, flowering shrubs should be pruned immediately after flowers are spent; never before. Pruning at the wrong time is actually worse than not pruning at all. Take out the oldest and largest stems first. Prune back about 1/3 of those stems. Don’t be afraid to be aggressive and you will be rewarded the following spring for your efforts.
To me, nothing proclaims spring quite like the intoxicating scent of a lilac in full bloom. When I catch a whiff of their heady aroma, I am immediately transported back to childhood. Lilacs are an old fashioned favorite that never go out of style.
They are hardy, easy to grow and in my opinion, still one of the nicest flowering shrubs. They average six to eight feet in height and come in a variety of colors from the many shades of purple, pink and red to white and even yellow. Dead-heading, or cutting off faded flower heads, is another secret that improves next season’s flowers. Lilacs can be prone to powdery mildew so they need good air circulation around them. One of my current favorites is ‘Josee,’ which will re-bloom if regularly dead-headed.Forsythias are one of the first shrubs to flower in the spring. Their cheery yellow flowers join those of the daffodils in welcoming spring. And if you can’t wait for them to bloom outside you can cut dormant branches to force indoors for early flowers. Forsythias are very fast growing and will bloom best in full sun. Remember the secret about pruning I shared with you? It’s particularly important with forsythias as their flowers form only on last year’s growth. A couple of good varieties for us are ‘Sunrise,’ which is an Iowa State University introduction and ‘Meadowlark.’
Because of our climate, we’ve always been severely limited on the varieties of hydrangeas we can grow here. Until the last few years, only the old standard, ‘Annabelle’ really thrived. And though we still can’t grow many of the classic macrophyla, or mophead hydrangeas, we have some exciting new options. ‘Endless Summer’ is a big departure in appearance from ‘Annabelle.’ It is a breakthrough for cold-climate gardeners because it flowers on the current year’s growth as well as on old wood. This means that killing frosts are no longer an issue.
I’ve had reliable flowers on mine even though we’ve had late frosts the last couple of years that caused dieback. ‘Limelight’ is a paniculata variety of hydrangea that blooms a lime green and fades to pink. It is fully hardy here. There are also several varieties of oak leaf hydrangeas, including my favorite, ‘Snow Queen.’Well, there are way too many flowering shrubs for one post. Looks like I’ll have to carry this topic into my next post. In the meantime, check out an old favorite gardening show which has recently returned to HGTV, ‘Gardener’s Diary.' Check your local listing for broadcast times. Host Erica Glasener takes you around the country in search of inspirational gardens and gardeners. Maybe it will inspire your garden creativity.
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