Flowering shrubs
Flowering shrubs bring flair to the garden, creating an eye-catching focal point whilst in full bloom and providing structure and texture to your outdoor space over the rest of the year. You can fill your garden with ornamental shrubs that flower from early spring through to late autumn and even into winter. Lilac plants and camellia bushes, for example, produce beautiful blooms in early spring while Magnolia often flowers even before it has come into leaf. Many flowering bushes are useful for attracting wildlife such as birds, bees, butterflies and beneficial insects into the garden and some will bring a delightful fragrance into the garden too. Grow scented flowering shrubs near paths, doorways, entrances or anywhere else in the garden you pass by regularly where you can fully appreciate their perfume in all its glory. Flowering shrubs can even be used as groundcover plants to control erosion and suppress weeds whilst helping to beautiful your garden in the process. Some flowering plants bloom on branches that grew the prior year (called “old wood”), whilst others bloom on this years growth (“new wood”) and there are some that bloom on both. It’s normally best to prune shrubs after flowering but in any case be careful to ensure you’re not cutting away nascent buds that you may prefer to leave to develop into flowers.
