There’s something so magical about the start of spring when our favourite flowering trees and shrubs burst into bloom. With the beautiful colours, the delicate petals fluttering in the breeze, and the irresistible fragrance, you can’t help but dreamily sigh and pretend for a moment that you’re in a Nora Ephron rom-com.
Spring is the perfect time to plant flowering trees and shrubs because the soil is nice and cool. This way, they won’t get shocked from heat stress. Wanna do a little spring landscape makeover? We put together a list of current faves you can snag from Salisbury this season, but instead of the typical flowering trees and shrubs most of us can recognize, we’re featuring some lesser-known spring bloomers that deserve some love!
Bring On the Bold Spring Colour With These Underrated Flowering Trees and Shrubs
These unique and distinctive flowering trees and shrubs will light up the landscape every spring with incredible colour. Warning: may cause excessive swooning, fawning, and an uncontrollable urge to twirl in slow motion with arms outstretched.
Honeyrose Honeysuckle
This absolute showstopper explodes into a puffball of candy pink blooms every spring. We’re kind of obsessed, and so are the neighbourhood butterflies and hummingbirds! The sweetly scented blossoms have skinny petals that create a frilly appearance and golden stamens that add a little pop of sunshine.
Honeyrose honeysuckle shrubs can reach up to 12 feet tall and wide at full size, making it perfect for mass planting as a windbreak. While most honeysuckle shrubs are prone to aphid attacks, the Honeyrose honeysuckle is totally aphid-resistant. Plant it in full sun or partial shade, and prune it once a year in early March.
Golden Variegated Dogwood
If you’ve got your heart set on a shrub or tree with white flowers in spring, dogwood is an obvious choice. But we gotta admit, the golden variegated dogwood is seriously top-tier in terms of visual spectacle. Now, the flowers are amazing, and all, but the foliage is out of this world.
The emerald leaves are trimmed with vibrant gold from spring to fall, and new growth emerges as pink! It keeps on showing off in summer with vibrant red berries, and in winter, its red stems really pop against the white snow. At maturity, it reaches seven feet tall and seven feet wide and is best planted in full sun or partial shade.
Weeping Peashrub
The pea shrub is one of the toughest flowering shrubs in existence! This bad boy can withstand freezing temperatures like a total champ. While the weeping pea shrub technically falls into the category of spring-flowering trees, it’s on the smaller side, so it just gets treated like a shrub. The weeping foliage is so dramatic and picturesque, and the lemon-yellow blossoms make it that much more awesome. It's smooth, and the olive-green bark is really lovely, too. Overall, a 10/10 statement plant that really sparks intrigue. At full size, it reaches about 15 feet high and 10 feet wide, with a typical clearance of 2 feet above the ground—plant in full sun to partial shade.
Spring is the perfect time to plant flowering trees and shrubs because the soil is nice and cool.
Muckle Plum Tree
This lesser-known ornamental tree with pink flowers really doesn’t get enough love! It doesn’t actually produce fruit—which luckily means less messy cleanup or stained driveways. Its vibrant, blushing blooms and compact size make it perfect for elevating the aesthetic of your front yard. They typically only reach about 15 feet high and 10 feet across.
They’re also pollution-tolerant, so they’re made for city living. It loves full sun and consistent, generous watering but needs good draining to prevent stagnant water sitting around its roots. Overall, the muckle plum is a low-maintenance wonder that brings incomparable colour to your outdoor scenery.
Kelsey Flowering Crab
This ultra hardy crabapple is packed with rich, cherry pink blooms that release an incredible perfume scent. New foliage emerges in a glossy bronze, transitioning into green with summer. It’s pollution-tolerant, so if you live in the city, it’s a great choice. It’s worth giving it an application of dormant oil in late winter to reduce the risk of overwintering diseases and pests. It reaches 25 feet at maturity with a spread of 20 feet and a clearance of four feet from the ground. To keep the Kelsey flowering crab happy, it likes full sun and moist soil, so deeply soak the surrounding soil regularly when it’s in its active growing season.
Cupid Cherry
You’ll love the cloud-like clusters of white blooms that appear on the Cupid cherry tree in spring. And once they fade, you’ll have some deliciously sweet fruits to harvest! Birds can’t resist the shiny red cherries that dangle like ornaments, so you’re sure to have some pretty visitors in the yard if you plant one of these beauties.
The glossy green leaves are lovely as well, transitioning to gold in autumn, which provides dynamic colour in the landscape until frost. Pruning out the suckers will help your Cupid cherry to grow steadily and produce more fruit. It’s a self-pollinator, so you don’t need to plant more than one. They can reach up to eight feet high and four feet across, and do best in full sun.
Looking for spring flowering trees and shrubs in Edmonton to add to your yard this year? The sooner you plant, the better—you want to give your new plants time to adjust to the increasing heat! If you need any assistance in getting your new plantings all put into place, don’t hesitate to ask one of our experts or enlist our planting services to help you out.