Garden Bushes

The Best Garden Shrubs to Add to Your Garden

Flowering bushes/shrubs are the foundation of any modern garden, offering a privacy screen along a border, attracting bees and birds, and providing amazing color and interest throughout the landscape. With hundreds of types and shapes, there’s a beautiful type bush for every one.

There are some key steps to choosing the right garden bush. First, make sure it’s suited for your USDA Planting Zone. You will need to figure out the area of your garden where you plan to plant it. Does it get full sun or does it like the shade? Here’s the most important items to remember:

• Some flowering garden bushes bloom on branches that grew the year before (old wood)
• Others bloom on this year’s growth (new wood)
• Others bloom on both old and new wood

If you’re not sure and have doubt on what you have with a specific bush, wait until the plant blooms, then prune it to your desired shape. If you prune beforehand, you risk cutting off flower buds and having no flowers for the season.

Here are our garden bush favorites, and a list of flowering bushes/shrubs to add to your garden this year.

Lavender (lavandula)

Oh the joys of lavender. I have to admit, it is our favorite and we have it throughout our property, including a large field. As a garden bush, lavender provides beautiful form, foliage color interest (Grey green) and amazing colored spike flowers. It is relatively easy to grow in certain zones, and provides scented buds and spikes for harvest.

Size: 1′ to 3′ spread depending on variety and age.

Zone: 5-9

Varieties: Try Grosso and Provence for great all purpose, hardy plants

Boxwood (buxus)

Ah, the formal and shaped boxwood, the mainstay of the English Cottage Garden. Boxwood garden shrubs come in a wide variety of types, over 140, with varieties that vary in leaf size and color, size and acceptable climate. Buxus can be used as a hedge, anchor or feature, and lends itself nicely to shaping.

Size: Typical varieties grow 1 to 6 feet, with some growing to 20 feet at maturity.

Zone: Boxwoods do best in zones 6-9

Varieties: Most common are American, Japanese, Small Leaf and Hybrids.

Hydrangea

Ok, here at Celtic Farm, we absolutely love our hydrangeas. We have propagated them and put them all over the property. Under trees, in garden beds, and even have a patch of about 30 for cut flowers. They are amazing bushes that add color and beautiful shape to any garden scene. Their big, bold flowers come in all types of colors, but blue and pink are the most common.

Size: 3 to 8 feet at maturity.

Zone: 3-9

Varieties: Mophead Hydrangeas are the most common, but there are too many varieties to list. You can find some here: Garden Bush – Hydrangea