Boost your curb appeal with flower power. Flowering shrubs provide long-lasting, eye-catching color to any garden design. They add elements of form, texture, and foliage to your outdoor space that you can enjoy year after year. Shrubs are reliable, low maintenance, and they fill your garden with colorful interest and seasonal beauty.
How Shrubs Enhance Your Home
Blooming shrubs can do more than elevate the overall look of your landscaping. Shrubs enhance your home’s exterior aesthetics and level up your curb appeal. In fact, shrubs can increase your property value and they can even help homes sell faster because homes with landscaping are often perceived to be more desirable.
Adding year-round plants for your front yard, like flowering shrubs, is a cost-effective way to create privacy and security around your home. Use shrubs to create seclusion and boundaries around your greenspace. They can provide a cover for windows, protect your home from inclement weather, and act as a barrier to wind and other natural elements.
The ecological benefits of growing shrubs in your landscape are the most important. Our urban environments need natural elements to sustain biodiversity. Without that support, the depletion of resources can directly impact our local ecosystems.
Blooming shrubs provide food and shelter for beneficial pollinators with their enticing blooms. They improve air quality by filtering dust and pollutants, and they contribute to erosion control and soil stabilization.
Choose the Perfect Flowering Shrubs for Your Garden
ROSES
Adorn your garden design with the timeless blooms of roses. Roses have a strong root system which allows them to grow quickly and produce a fragrant bounty of beautiful blossoms.
They thrive in 6-8 hours of direct sunlight per day and often serve as hedge plants. Roses are a very beautiful and effective choice to add to the security and privacy of your home. These fragrant flowering shrubs are a favorite to pollinators, such as bees and butterflies. Pollinators love the alluring scent and the abundance of bright blooms.
For a flowering showstopper, try the Avant Garde™ Roses in your garden design. This flowering shrub produces red and white speckled blooms that are eye-catching and unique.
Bee Heaven™ Roses are low-growing, fragrant yellow roses that truly live up to their name! The flowers will invite pollinators to your landscape throughout the blooming season.
For low maintenance seasonal color, fill your garden’s dark corners with the bold blooms of Double Knock Out® Roses. They are carefree landscaping roses with fuller blooms and twice as many petals.
HYDRANGEAS
Hydrangeas are a spring-time favorite. They have an old-fashioned charm with a friendly elegance. This flowering shrub is prized for its beautiful blooms, soil tolerance, and easy care. Generally, hydrangeas prefer partial shade to thrive. The site selection for planting hydrangeas should receive morning sun followed by afternoon shade.
Bloomstruck® Hydrangeas have striking petals with rounded, prolific blooms and vibrant green foliage. They are fast-growing deciduous shrubs that will provide excellent color through the summer and in the fall. A deciduous plant naturally loses their leaves during part of the year so don’t worry when this happens.
Enhance your outdoor space with the gorgeous and bright flowers of Seaside Serenade® Newport Hydrangeas by Monrovia®. These showy reblooming shrubs turn blue-violet in acidic soils and create attention-getting curb appeal when planted in groupings.
ALTHEA
For more seasonal color this summer, add Althea to your landscape! It is a drought-resistant flowering shrub for hot climates, like Texas. Commonly known as Rose of Sharon, Althea is a deciduous flowering shrub with exotic blooms that prefer full sun throughout the day. Althea has an upright habit that needs ample room for growth. It can easily adapt to various soil types and can tolerate urban pollution.
Add a tropical punch to your garden design with Strawberry Smoothie™ Althea. This beautiful flowering shrub produces double pink blooms through late summer.
Blueberry Smoothie™ Althea produces gorgeous blueberry-hued flowers with green serrated leaves. This medium-sized shrub can mature to 8 ft tall to 4 ft wide.
AZALEAS
Azaleas are one of the most popular flowering shrubs in the South. They are extremely versatile and come in many different colors and styles. Azaleas are evergreen flowering shrubs with large, brightly colored blooms. They perform best in 4-6 hours of sun or filtered shade throughout the day. Azaleas can be fussy about their growing conditions. They prefer a rich, highly acidic, and well-draining soil to avoid yellowing of the leaves.
Encore® Azalea Autumn Chiffon™ is a unique and beautiful variety. The clusters of blooms are light pink with a deep pink blotched center through the spring with additional, lighter flushes in summer and fall.
Encore® Azalea Autumn Royalty™ is a captivating, compact evergreen shrub bathed in clusters of beautiful blooms that will emerge all season long. Encore® Azaleas are the world’s best-selling re-blooming azalea and one of the best you will ever plant!
At Calloway’s and Cornelius, we have a vast selection of stunning blooming shrubs ideal for sun or shade gardens. Visit our website here to explore more of our dazzling collection!
How To Plant Flowering Shrubs in Your Landscape
When planting your new blooming shrubs, use Calloway’s Premium Tree & Shrub Garden Soil. Our professional soil is loaded with helpful water saving ingredients including expanded shale and coconut coir. It also has beneficial organic ingredients to promote strong root development and to enhance the retention and uptake of water and nutrients.
Treat your new plantings with Nature’s Creation® Root Stimulator, as directed. It stimulates root development by supplying the natural plant growth hormones from seaweed. As a natural bio-stimulant, it helps lessen the stress of transplanting.
When planting shrubs and trees, dig a hole twice the diameter of the root ball. Mix in equal parts of Tree & Shrub Garden Soil with the native soil. Place the root ball in the hole and fill it with garden soil.
Complete the look and protect your plant’s roots with Calloway’s Premium Organic Pine Bark Mulch. Our Pine Bark Mulch is the ideal mulch for plants and shrubs that prefer an acidic environment. It provides an attractive top-dressing finish that helps reduce weed growth and water evaporation, as well as maintain a more constant soil temperature for your plant’s roots. It is great for azaleas, camellias, hydrangeas, and more.
Pruning and Caring for Your Flowering Shrubs: Expert Tips and Tricks
Watering is essential to maintain the health of your plants. Here are the general rules for different flowering shrubs. Remember to keep your plant tags for instant access to care tips for your specific plants.
- Roses need at least one inch of water per week. They prefer deep watering that thoroughly soaks the root ball and surrounding soil. Roses will show signs of stress or wilting in the mornings to indicate the need for water, especially in the summer.
- For Hydrangeas, water deeply and regularly during the first growing season to establish root system. Once established, water as needed to maintain an evenly moist soil.
- Altheas prefer deep watering once a week, or 2-3 times a week for new plantings, but don’t overdo it. The leaves will turn yellow to indicate overwatering.
- Azaleas planted in spring require a thorough watering. Newly planted azaleas require routine waterings the first year, but once established, watering can be less frequent.
Help your blooming shrubs flourish with Calloway’s Premium Flowering Shrub Plant Food. The 9-3-6 formula contains nitrogen, Fx Iron®, calcium, sulfur, water soluble manganese, and other key ingredients to help your shrubs grow with bigger, bolder blooms. Use on all blooming shrubs such as azaleas, camellias, gardenias, hydrangeas, and more. Apply at the time of planting or if you are feeding azaleas, apply every 45 days from the initial bloom drop.
To keep your flowering shrubs at their best, it may require some pruning or deadheading. Prune after flowering to avoid removing any of the current season’s blooms. Prune in the late winter or early spring to remove any damaged or dead branches and to promote new growth.
Flowering shrubs can do more than add curb appeal to the exterior of your home. They can liven up the inside of your home, too! Shrubs and their constant blooms make for excellent cut flowers. Carefully, snip a few blooms from your plants and place them in a decorative vase with water for an elegant floral accent to your décor.
Shop with Ease
At Calloway’s and Cornelius, we are here for all your gardening needs! Visit us today and explore our entire collection of seasonal blooms, fantastic pottery, indoor plants, fresh vegetables, stately trees and shrubs, and so much more! Shop one of our 28 neighborhood stores, serving our loyal customers for over 35 years.
Have questions? Ask our Texas Certified Nursery Professionals; they are here to help!
