Flowering Trees or Shrubs
- Camellia shrubs produce flowers in fall and winter, when other shrubs are not blooming.camellia image by Christopher Hall from Fotolia.com
Having a yard filled only with evergreen shrubs or trees can create a boring landscape and lessen your home's appeal. Adding some flowering trees or shrubs around your house can create visual interest that heralds the arrival of spring. Be sure to select varieties that are suitable for the hardiness zone in which you live and the lighting conditions in your yard. - This shrub can grow to a height and width of 6 to 10 feet and produces pink, peach, red or white flowers in the spring. The University of Illinois Extension notes that these shrubs produce fruit that can be used in jellies. This fruit appears in the fall, when the shrubs have green foliage. Flowering quince can handle sun or partial shade. Smaller varieties include the Texas scarlet, which grows 2 to 3 feet tall, and the jet trail, which reaches a height of 3 feet. "Some species make effective ground covers or low hedges," notes the Fine Gardening website. This shrub is suitable for Zones 4 through 9.
- If you're looking for a shrub that produces flowers in the fall or winter, consider the camellia. These shrubs prefer humid, moderate climates and feature rose-shaped blossoms in shades of ivory, red and pink. Camellia shrubs can grow in sun or partial shade in Zones 6 through 11. At a mature height of 20 feet, the camellia oleifera is classified as a tree by the Fine Gardening website. It produces fragrant white flowers that are 2 to 3 inches wide. Smaller, shrub varieties can grow to only 3 feet in height.
- The dogwood also comes in shrub and tree varieties, with heights ranging from 8 to 40 feet. It's an appropriate choice for yards in Zones 2 through 8 and can tolerate partial shade. Dogwoods offer spring blossoms in shades including pink and white, and they can bring purple or red fall foliage to your yard. Birds are attracted by the clusters of fruit produced by some varieties, but the Fine Gardening website notes that this fruit can be toxic to humans. The red twig dogwood is a shrub with red, yellow or orange bark that can brighten your landscape in the winter months. You can grow the Kousa dogwood as a tree or large shrub; it produces red fruit in the summer and reddish-purple leaves in the fall, reaching heights as great as 30 feet and widths of up to 15 feet.
- These trees brighten up the spring landscape with white, pink or purplish-pink blooms. Suitable for Zones 5 through 9, redbuds can grow to a height and width of 35 feet, with smaller varieties like the Covey spanning only 6 to 10 feet in its "weeping" form. The Fine Gardening website designates these trees as low-maintenance and notes that they can handle full sun or partial shade. The trees can produce yellow leaves in the fall. The fastest-growing redbud tree is the forest pansy variety, according to the Sunset website, which notes that the tree does not usually live for a long time. It produces purple-red leaves with pointed tips.
