Valuable contributors to the landscape, shrubs serve multiple purposes throughout the year. They visually anchor our home to its surroundings, provide foliar fences to conceal unsightly views or frame attractive ones, demarcate property borders and suggest paths, offer structure and permanence, and depending on the type, supply berries and shelter for wildlife in winter, and some of our most magnificent fall foliage. Many also play an important role in the flowering year.
Forsythia is the first shrub to convince us of this — golden bursts in earliest spring. Arguably the unfussiest of plants, it is not without requirements, specifically its placement — massed and at a distance. All shrubs serve specific purposes and spaces, ranging from those small and delicate enough for inclusion in the garden, to those which play roles similar to specimen trees.
Though the blossoms of most shrubs have a life expectancy of three weeks, longer with cooler, gentler weather, briefer with intense heat or storms, there are a few exceptions for inclusion in the garden where shrubs, because of the space they consume, must earn their keep: kerria, cheerful yellow blossoms along willowy lime green limbs in spring and fall; potentilla, a fountain of delicate leaves laced with soft yellow flowers from June to autumn; and roses, whose several varieties provide us with six months of blossoms and companion perfectly with many flowers.
Other shrubs with less longevity of bloom though worth their weight in the garden include: daphne ‘Carol Mackay’, a mound of leaves rimmed ivory and pale pink wands of flowers that rival every scent in the garden; weigela, from ‘My Monet’ with its pink flowers echoed in leaves variegated cream, pale green, and pink, to the sultry ‘Wine and Roses’ appropriately named for its rose colored blooms and dark purple foliage; fothergilla, its white bottle-brush flowers partnering with early spring’s narcissus and bursting into fall flames comparable to maples; “beauty berry”, a vase of violet flowers in late summer developing into clusters of amethyst fruits persisting till Christmas; “beauty bush”, which disappears without the garden’s floral compliments to enhance its rose, tubular buds opening into white petals flushed with yellow, apricot and pink; and the many cultivars of “butterfly bush” with their jewel-like racemes of cerise, violet, lavender, indigo and magenta.
Flowering shrubs are the stars of the shade garden in spring, far showier than the flowers on the forest floor – trilliums, lady’s slipper, sweet woodruff – all delicate woodlanders. Due to their considerable and evergreen mass, rhododendrons are candidates for delineating the garden’s borders, their leathery leaves smothered in late spring with floriferous globes from pale yellow to deep magenta. The several varieties of azaleas provide the woodland’s essential layering between trees and earth with a tapestry of petals through April and May; and in June, the limbs of the mountain laurel are completely obscured with clusters of pink buds which open white flowers and resemble miniature tea cups decorated with pink streaks. Later in the summer, clethra contributes interest in the shade garden with six weeks of fragrance from the white panicles of ‘Summer Sweet’ or the rose racemes of ‘Ruby Spice’.
Large flowering shrubs serve multiple purposes in the lawn, forming walls, screens, frames, focal points and habitats for wildlife. There are stellar selections for every season of the year. The pearly catkins of pussy willows in natural settings are the earliest to flower and persist the longest, silver caterpillars swelling until pollen bursts along their spines to awaken the honeybees and welcome the daffodils. The original purpose for spring’s lilacs was to screen the privy, and they still deserve a grove where their fragrant panicles invite passage. The viburnum family is among the most varied. Plant ‘Dawn’, the earliest bloomer, and ‘Korean Spicebush’, the sweetest, near an entrance, where the perfume of their pink flowers will be appreciated. Larger varieties require space: the lace-cap flowers of ‘Summer Snowflakes’ cloak the horizontal limbs like fallen doilies; and the burgundy foliage of the columnar ‘Onodaga’ is complimented with its spring flowers, pale pink petals circling cranberry centers.
Although spring’s ‘Bridal Wreath’ is ubiquitous, spireas also bring summer bloom. ‘Anthony Waterer’ is smothered with deep raspberry inflorescences, ‘Snow Mound’, with clusters of white flowers along cascading limbs, and ‘Gold Flame’, grown primarily for its fiery spring and fall leaves, displays a kaleidoscope of pink florets crowning foliage that matures to dark green. Later in the summer, the glorious Rose-of-Sharon unfurls its hibiscus blooms, crepe petals of pale pastels to deep shades of blue, lilac, lavender, orchid, mauve, wine, pink and peach. Planted in allees they resemble wedding bowers.
Autumn is reserved for hydrangea and its many cultivars, as the market has expanded exponentially in recent years. Some varieties start flowering in summer, such as ‘Annabelle’, a mound of blooms emerging as green globes and aging to white. Others wait till fall, like the old-fashioned favorite, panicles of ever-maturing hues opening cream, flushing pink, and darkening to mauve. There are varieties with blue blossoms, and purple, and pink, and some with differing shades of blue, purple and pink on the same shrub. Others entice us with names such as ‘Little Lime’, ‘Vanilla Strawberry’, and ‘Polar Ball’. Of particular interest in fall are the oak leaf hydrangeas, with foliage turning every conceivable autumn hue against ivory racemes and new, lime-green growth, and the latest to bloom, ‘Tardiva’, its delicate sterile petals surrounding miniscule fertile clusters, which mature to the color of antique parchment and withstand our weather conditions to look attractive all winter.
It might seem strange to use as a criteria when selecting a shrub for its flowers consideration of its appearance in winter, however, long after the flowers fade the shrub remains in the garden, and we are grateful for the callicarpa’s berries, the lime green of kerria’s twigs, rose hips, the exfoliating hydrangea, the dried seeds of spirea and rose-of-sharon. Because whatever we plant with the promise of the flowers they bring us in spring, summer and fall, gardeners always have an eye to the season without them.