If you’re looking for an extra element of vibrance and beauty to add to your home landscape, flowering shrubs can add that boost of brilliance and curb appeal you’ve been seeking.
They offer reliable color, create structure and even privacy, as well as attract pollinators. They can accentuate entryways, fill small landscape beds, or adorn large properties, offering blooms from spring to fall in some cases with proper grouping and planting.
Use them along your walkways to create backdrops in beds, near your patio or pool, or as foundation plants.
While you might be sold on shrubs, you might not know which ones would work best in your yard. That’s why we’re here: to help you find the best flowering shrubs for your home landscape.
Check out our extensive list of recommendations based on your hardiness zone.
Best flowering shrubs for…
Best Flowering Shrubs For Fragrance
Many people love to bring fragrance to their gardens. Great scents can conjure up vacation memories or delight your senses. Try these best flowering shrubs that offer some great aroma, as well as lovely aesthetics.
Star Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) – This beautiful shrub is prized for its fragrant, star-shaped, white flowers, and thick, dark green foliage. Plant near a patio or entryway in U.S. Hardiness Zones 7 to 10 so you can enjoy the aromas.
Lilac (Syringa) – Prized for its delightful fragrance, this shrub is easy to grow, deer resistant, relatively pest free, and blooms in late spring with white, cream, rose, pink, lavender or purple flowers. The dark green foliage remains attractive in summer. This stunner grows best in U.S. Hardiness Zones 3 to 7.
Gardenia (Gardenia jasminoides) – This evergreen shrub with thick, lustrous, dark green leaves and extremely fragrant, white flowers grows best in U.S. Hardiness Zones 8 to 11.
Swamp Azalea – Prized for its scented flowers and fall foliage, this shrub – rhododendron viscosum – is appealing for its funnel-shaped, white flowers that are tinged pink. Grow them in U.S. Hardiness Zones 3 to 9.
Clethra – Butterflies and songbirds love this shrub for its nectar. It provides four-season interest with green leaves in spring, spiky white or pink fragrant flowers in summer, golden leaves in fall, and seeds in winter. Grow in U.S. Hardiness Zones 4 to 9.
Best Flowering Shrubs For Shade
Try these best flowering shrubs for shade.
Oak Leaf Hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) – Commonly called oakleaf hydrangea, is an upright, broad, multi-stemmed, deciduous shrub that typically grows 4- to 6-feet tall in U.S. Hardiness Zones 6 to 9.
Virginia Sweetspire (Itea virginica) – This mound-shaped shrub has small, white flowers that bloom on arching branches. Leaves turn red to purple in fall. Plant it in U.S. Hardiness Zones 6 to 9.
Azalea Formosa (Azalea indica ‘formosa’) – These azaleas provide pinkish-lavender flowers in spring that draw hummingbirds. The color show progresses, filling the shrub with large, deep pinkish-purple flowers in U.S. Hardiness Zones 7 to 9.
Sweetshrub (Calycanthus floridus) – In U.S. Hardiness Zones 4 to 9, this shrub is valued for its sweet, often fragrant flowers.
Best Full Sun Flowering Shrubs
These best flowering shrubs can give you some full sun blooms and attract hummingbirds and butterflies to your backyard.
Glossy abelia (Abelia x grandiflora) – This gracefully arching shrub boasts bright, glossy foliage and fragrant, bell-shaped white flowers. Use these shrubs as screens or hedges in U.S. Hardiness Zones 6 to 9.
Hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinenesis) – This tropical, evergreen shrub is known for its bold flowers that can be up to 6 inches across with a showy central tube. Try this one in U.S. Hardiness Zones 8 to 10.
Rose (Rosa spp.) – One of the most popular garden plants, roses are both beautiful and fragrant. There are many, colorful options to grow in U.S. Hardiness Zones 2 to 9.
Spirea – This U.S. Hardiness Zone 5 to 9 shrub performs best in full sun, producing more blooms, vibrant color, and brighter autumn foliage.
Best Flowering Shrubs For Long-Lasting Blooms
Each shrub you choose in your landscape will have a bloom cycle. While there isn’t one shrub that will flower all year long, there are some that offer longer bloom times or three-season interest.
Here are a few best flowering shrubs that deliver something special in spring, summer, and fall.
Butterfly Bush (Buddleia) – Buddleja davidii, also called summer lilac, butterfly-bush, or orange eye, is fast-growing, offering masses of flowers in long, spiked trusses that bloom from summer to fall. Prune them in early spring; otherwise, this shrub that grows best in U.S. Hardiness Zones 5 to 9 is relatively low maintenance.
Hydrangea Limelight (Paniculata) – This unique panicle hydrangea offers huge flowers that open in celadon green and then age to pinks, reds, and burgundies, persisting through frost for months in U.S. Hardiness Zones 3 to 9.
Spirea Japonica ‘Goldmound’ – This shrub brings vibrant golden spring foliage, accented by clusters of pink flowers. The foliage cools to a yellowish green in summer then becomes a rich, yellowish orange in fall. Grow this shrub in U.S. Hardiness Zones 4-8.
Roses – In U.S. Hardiness Zones 5 to 6, roses can be a great addition. Choose hardy varieties, considering rose type, size, characteristics, and your location.
Best Flowering Shrubs For Early Blooms
Can’t wait for spring to arrive? Light up your yard early with these best flowering shrubs that explode with eye-catching color early, as well as provide pollen for bees and other pollinators.
Lilac (Syringa) – Prized for its delightful fragrance, this shrub is easy to grow, deer resistant, relatively pest free, and blooms in late spring with white, cream, rose, pink, lavender or purple flowers. The dark green foliage remains attractive in summer. This stunner grows best in U.S. Hardiness Zones 3 to 7.
Forsythia – These fast-growing, low-maintenance shrubs are well known for their long branches filled with golden yellow blooms in U.S. Hardiness Zones 5 to 8. This one is also a favorite of bees and butterflies.
Azalea Formosa (Azalea indica ‘formosa’) – These azaleas provide pinkish-lavender flowers in spring that draw hummingbirds. The color show progresses, filling the shrub with large, deep pinkish-purple flowers in U.S. Hardiness Zones 7 to 9.
Best Low-Maintenance Flowering Shrubs
If you want to create a low maintenance garden, then it is likely that you will want to include at least a few of these best flowering shrubs.
Forsythia – These fast-growing, low-maintenance shrubs are well known for their long branches filled with golden yellow blooms in U.S. Hardiness Zones 5 to 8. This one is also a favorite of bees and butterflies.
Barberry (Berberis darwinii) – This evergreen barberry bursts forth with clusters of red burnished tangerine buds that open to vibrant orange flowers in spring in U.S. Hardiness Zones 5 to 9. The leaves are a dark shiny green on this drought-tolerant shrub.
Oak Leaf Hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) – Hydrangea quercifolia, commonly called oakleaf hydrangea, is an upright, broad, multi-stemmed, deciduous shrub that typically grows 4- to 6-feet tall in U.S. Hardiness Zones 6 to 9.
Japanese Kerria – This shrub flowers early, thriving in full- to part-shade landscapes in U.S. Hardiness Zones 4 to 9. Its flowers are bright golden yellow with five petals.
Potentilla – This shrub offers a long bloom time with saucer-shaped blooms that come in shades of white, yellow, pink, orange, or red. Flowers are usually single, but can also be semi-double or double. Grow it in U.S. Hardiness Zones 2 to 8.
Best Evergreen Flowering Shrubs
Evergreen shrubs don't lose their leaves for the winter, so they offer color in the landscape year-round. But to up the ante, these best flowering shrubs offer beautiful blooms, too.
Glossy abelia (Abelia x grandiflora) – Often used as a screen, hedge, or barrier, this gracefully arching shrub has bright, glossy foliage highlighting fragrant, white, bell-shaped flowers. Grow it in U.S. Hardiness Zones 6 to 9.
Azalea Formosa (Azalea indica ‘formosa’) – This larger evergreen azalea produces an abundance of lavender purple blooms in early spring and again in fall in U.S. Hardiness Zones 7 to 9.
Gardenia (Gardenia jasminoides) – This evergreen shrub with thick, lustrous, dark green leaves and extremely fragrant, white flowers grows best in U.S. Hardiness Zones 8 to 11.
Rhododendron – If you’re looking for something in U.S. Hardiness Zone 5-8, most rhododendrons are evergreen and explode with vibrant blooms in a host of colors.
Viburnum – Many viburnums are evergreen and great for U.S. Hardiness Zones 5 to 6, offering flowering options that attract birds and pollinators. You can use them as ornamental shrubs or dense, flowering hedges.
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