Evergreen Shrubs

From the heat of summer into the deep of winter, most evergreen shrubs will provide your yard with color year-round. With careful planning, you can have beautiful blooms in your yard for most of the year.

The perfect foundation plant, blooming shrubs are ideal for screening your yard from prying eyes or as the focal point in your landscape. Some shrubs will even produce fruit after flowering, which can be visually appealing on their own.

Flowering shrubs will not lose their leaves during their dormant period and will produce beautifully colored blooms to fill your yard with color throughout the year. While not all evergreen plants will flower, those that do are perfect for those places in your garden where you want full plants with just a hint of color.

Fast Growing Shrubs for Year-Round Color

Along with their consistency, evergreens are valued by gardeners for their versatility. They provide a finished look to your landscape, year-round providing you with texture and color. They also create a lush backdrop for your much-loved flowering annuals and easy to grow perennials.

When it comes to providing your yard with year-round color, you need to plant evergreen shrubs throughout your yard. There are a variety of evergreen plants and hedge bushes that will provide you with a beautiful flower display and those that are highly scented in the winter.

Daphne (Daphne mezereum)

Daphne plants are the perfect evergreen plant for your yard with their small and fragrant blooms that flower in the winter and early spring.

There are several varieties to choose from including the plain-leaved and variegated types. It is a slow-growing shrub, which makes it the perfect evergreen shrub for your garden.

Azalea – Vibrant Shrubs

This flowering shrub comes in a variety of colors, giving you a wide array of choices for landscaping. The Azalea can be either evergreen or deciduous and come in a variety of different sizes.

They do best in partial sun and plenty of moisture, along with needing fertile, well-drained soil.

Glossy-Leaf Paper Plant (Fatsia Japonica)

This exotic-looking shrub is exceptionally versatile and surprisingly hardy. Its large, glossy, hand-shaped leaves cope well in coastal conditions and problematic shady areas in the garden.

In the autumn, large stems of creamy white blooms arranged in spherical umbels appear. You can place the Fatsia japonica plant along borders or in large patio containers.

Lavender (Lavandula stoechas) – Repelling Shrubs

The Lavender plant is a fantastic evergreen shrub that is grown for its fragrant flowers and scented silver-green foliage. It not only keeps unwelcome insects and mosquitoes away but also blooms beautifully.

The hardy shrub flowers in the summer and provides your landscape with shades of lilac, purple or pink blooms. It is perfect when mixed into some evergreen ground cover plants.

Bees and butterflies are attracted to the shrub, and they are exceptional drought tolerant perennials. To enjoy the wonderful aroma of lavender indoors, grow it in a pot and enjoy these fragrant houseplants all year. You won’t need lavender essential oil when you can grow the plant itself.

Spotted Laurel (Aucuba Japonica)

The Aucuba shrub is the most robust evergreen shrub you can plant, as well as being one of the most low maintenance shrubs. They are tolerant of full shade and dry soils and can withstand salty coastal conditions and pollution.

As outdoor plants that don’t need sun, or at least very much, they are easy to grow and offer interest and texture to garden spaces. The large glossy and leathery leaves give your garden a tropical look. In the fall, the female plants will produce bright red berries if there is a male plant nearby.

Camellia (Camellia reticulata) – The Flowering Shrub

Camellias are well-loved for their glossy, dark green foliage and their spring flowers. The flowers of the Camellia shrub can be single or double and come in a variety of colors from pink to yellow.

They are naturally large but come in dwarf varieties and can tolerate hard pruning if they become too big for their space.

Spindle Tree – Burning-Bush (Euonymus)

A versatile shrub, the Euonymus is extremely low maintenance and can tolerate coastal conditions, poor soils, and shade. The foliage of these quick growing evergreen trees appears in a variety of colors from green to variegated gold or white, providing beautiful color to your garden in the winter.

Mahonia (Mahonia japonica) – Fast Growing

The Mahonia plant is similar to the Holly plant in that it has an architectural form and spiny, glossy leaves. The fragrant plants bloom with bright yellow flowers in the late winter and spring.

The flowers bloom on long, elegant racemes or in clusters at the top of the branches for a striking display when the rest of the garden is dormant. They are a great low-maintenance addition to woodland gardens and shrub borders, as well as being some of the best plants for privacy.

Photinia – “Berry” Shrubs

Robust and versatile shrubs, the Photinia boasts glossy leaves that are bright red when they are young. Photinia shrubs also work well to repel flies and mosquitoes and should be considered in addition to any companion planting in your garden. The leaves gradually change to bronze-green through to deep green as they mature.

Holly Plant (Ilex paraguariensis)

Holly is an evergreen shrub known for its glossy, dark green leaves. They make for a great dense hedge, privacy bushes, or planted as part of a mixed border.

They flower in the spring, and the female shrubs produce yellow or red berries if a male pollination partner is nearby. The Holly shrub is tolerant of coastal conditions and partial shade.

Rhododendron (Rhododendron ferrugineum) – The Flowering Evergreen Shrub

The Rhododendron is a broadleaf evergreen shrub that is often used to dress up shady areas in the yard. The blooms flower in a variety of colors with pastel tints, with red being the most popular.

Some rhododendron varieties like the Azalea or Rhododendron simsii work extremely well as houseplants to clean the air. You will continue to see blooms throughout the fall, spring, and summer, adding interest to your garden in the winter.

Weigela (Weigela coraeensis)

The Weigela is an old favorite when it comes to flowering shrubs. They are fast growing and relatively undemanding when it comes to maintenance. The dark leaves produce a beautiful backdrop for the pink blooms that flower in the late spring. They can tolerate partial sun or shade.

Lilac (Syringa vulgaris) – Vivid Beautiful Shrubs

Another traditional favorite among gardeners is the Lilac. The wild lilac or Ceanothus is one of the most drought tolerant plants for your garden. It opens its blooms in the late spring and early summer.

The timing of the flowers, fragrance, and color of the blooms will depend on the variety you choose. To create a striking focal point in your yard, choose a miniature tree variety.

French Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) – Large Colorful Shrubs

There are many different kinds of hydrangeas that it might be difficult to choose which one to plant in your garden. The French Hydrangea boasts large, colorful flower heads that bloom in early summer and hang around until well past the first frost.

The Hydrangea blooms come in blue, pink, and white varieties and can be planted in containers as well as the garden. Adding Epsom salt to the soil can change the colors of the blooms.

Virginia Sweetspire (Itea virginica)

Sweetspire is an evergreen shrub that provides beautiful white flowers in the summer and provides you with luscious red-purple leaves in the fall. Talk about all-season splendor! The Sweetspire flower blooms have a sweet fragrance that attracts butterflies and bees.

These drought and heat resistant plants can withstand both dry and wet soils and do like some shade. This shrub averages three to four feet tall but can get as high as five feet in the right growing conditions. Sweetspire spreads as wide as it is tall.

Black Lace Elderberry (Sambucus)

The dark leaf black lace elderberry shrub provides a strong background color to allow the other plants in your garden to shine. The pink flowers bloom in midsummer and attract bees. The flowers turn to berries in the fall that will attract birds to your yard.

Sunshine Blue Bluebeard (Caryopteris incana) – Butterflies’ Favorite Shrubs

In the late summer and early fall the lavender-blue flowers of the Sunshine Blue Bluebeard bloom. Butterflies love the plant, which adds even more color to your garden. Some varieties of the shrub offer grey-green leaves, while others bring gold into the scene.

Adding some shrubs to your landscape can provide your yard with year-round interest. Unlike the majority of the evergreen and the fastest growing pine trees, shrubs include both needled and broadleaves and produce beautiful flowers and berries throughout the year.

Utilize evergreen shrubs as a key foundation plant when planning your garden and enjoy the brilliant colors and blooms throughout all of the seasons.

We hope you found the information in this article helpful. If you enjoyed learning about the different evergreen shrubs that will provide your yard with year-round color, please feel free to share these flowering bushes tips will all your friends and family on Pinterest and Facebook.