The first stirrings of spring are a welcome sight, but spring bulbs and magnolias are just an encore to a host of stunning, flowering shrubs.
Every spring there are a number of bright and beautiful newcomers to catch our eyes, but not to be outdone, are some old stalwarts that have stood the test of time. They’re the kind of shrubs that, with a minimum of upkeep will grow and bloom profusely in any reasonably drained soil, transforming the garden with a blast of spring colour, before receding gracefully into the background.
The all-important evergreens provide year-round foliage and structure while the deciduous shrubs give a new look for every season. deciduous branches also let the precious winter sun through to warm wet, cold ground as they are extremely cold-hardy and for most of them, the colder the winter, the better the spring show.
Spiraeas thrive under most conditions, although they prefer a cold winter and warm summer. Spiraea cantonienesis is considered one of the best for warm regions.
The tiny, rose-like flowers form pea-sized balls, densely clothing reddish branches. This species will grow up to 1.8 metres tall but is easily kept to a metre and makes an excellent hedge. the double-form Flore-Pleno is the most popular.
Deutzias are beautiful, deciduous shrubs with long, straight stems crowded with sprays of pink and white flowers. There are a number of superb hybrids, many of them antiques. Deutzia Nikko is the first to flower, and one of the smallest at just 60 cm tall. it forms a neat mound about a metre wide, often rooting as it spreads, and is beautiful in a rock garden.
Like many deciduous shrubs, deutzias flower on wood produced the previous summer so it’s important not to remove this when pruning. instead, cut to ground level two or three of the older canes that have already flowered. This promotes new growth but leaves the young branches for future flowering.
In hot summer areas, both spiraeas and deutzias are best sheltered from the midday sun as this can cause burnt foliage.
Somewhat bolder than the dainty deutzias, the weigelas bear masses of white, pink and crimson, trumpet shaped flowers, which can absolutely smother the whole bush in spring. there are a number of cultivars ranging between 1.8 and 3 metres tall and they are often trained as standards. Weigelas are fully frost-hardy and grow in full sun or light shade. Keep them young and bountiful by pruning out older branches after each flowering.
Viburnums are tough, dependable and appealing. Some are famous for their fragrance, some for their showy flowers and others for their berries or autumn colours. All are very hardy and all have lovely foliage. The evergreen species are often used for hedging although they can be prone to thrip attack in a hot summer.
of the deciduous viburnums, one of the most spectacular for spring flowering is viburnum plicatum oariesii, a rounded shrub with white lace-cap flowers sitting like spring snow on tiered branches. viburnum burkwoodii Anne Russell is one of the best for early spring fragrance, while Viburnum pliicatum Roseace produces pink-flushed snowballs on deeply veined, dark green leaves with a bronze purple tint. Viburnum opulous Sterile is the famous white snowball tree, growing to about 3 metres tall.
Beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) blooms profusely in late spring, forming a cloud of bloom in delicate shades of pink. interesting fruit folows the flowers and brown fakey bark is a feature in winter.
Beauty bush flowers best in a cold climate, improving with age and needs only a light prune to remove the oldest wood and make room for the new. very old shrubs, past their best, will recover if pruned to ground level. Like most deciduous shrubs, kolkwitzia is shown to best advantage when worked amongst a predominance of evergreens.
Where winters are too mild to get the best flowering from deciduous shrubs, there are plenty of evergreen shrubs to colour the spring months. New Zealand manuka (leptosperum) varieties are a spectacular example, in gorgeous tones of pink-red with a variety of forms.
Another colourful native is the shrub form of New Zealand rata, oetrosideros carminea, which forms a tidy mound that turns a vibrant red. for a show-stopping bolt of blue, you can’t go past the Californian lilacs, especially in a coastal garden.
The most spectaculr spring-flowering evergreens for a cooler climate are the camellias, rhododendrons, azaleas (pictured) and lily of the valley shrubs. When given their favourite moist, well-drained soil, they’re extremely easy to grow.