5 Top-Rated Shrubs for Easy Maintenance Landscapes
For many home gardeners, it’s not the lack of desire to work in the garden, but the lack of time to do the work. Wouldn’t it be nice to relax on your patio, look out into your lush landscape, and know that the shrubs you’ve planted are growing beautifully all on their own? By choosing low maintenance varieties, it’s easy to realize that dream. Here are five top-rated shrubs you’ll love to grow.
Whether you’ve inherited a high-maintenance landscape in your new home or chosen plants that require too much of your time, you can make a change to an easier lifestyle. When you swap out the most time-consuming plants in your garden for those that are easier to maintain, you’ll have more time to enjoy the garden rather than see it as a chore.
1. Double Play Doozie® Spiraea
Double Play Doozie® spirea shines in the landscape from spring to fall, reblooming abundantly with no pruning needed. Spent flowers tuck down into the foliage and new flowers grow above them, eliminating any worry about dried flowers ruining the view.
The Double Play® series of spirea offers eight different varieties, including those with red, pink, and white flowers and a multitude of foliage colors. They range from 1½-3 feet tall and are commonly used in mass plantings, foundation plantings, and even as short hedges. Plant them in full sun to part shade in zones 3-8.
Varieties in the Double Play® series were selected for their outstanding foliage and flower colors that make these shrubs showy from spring through fall. Deer tend to stay clear, but hummingbirds enjoy their vibrant blooms. See all eight colors here.
2. Let's Dance Can Do!® Hydrangea
Hybrid hydrangeas like Let's Dance Can Do!® are easy to grow in sun or part shade.
Hydrangeas don’t need to be fussy plants - some don’t require any pruning at all. When you choose a hybrid rebloomer, you won’t need to worry about having perfectly acidic soil that stays moist all the time, and you won’t need to worry about when to prune because they don’t require it.
Cooler fall temperatures draw out purple tones in the foliage and make the flowers blush burgundy. Try growing them as a background for your perennial border in full sun or at the woodland’s edge in part shade in zones 5-9.
3. Azurri Blue Satin® Hibiscus
Azurri Blue Satin® Rose of Sharon is an excellent specimen, especially stunning when planted en masse.
Today’s modern landscape roses of Sharon are far lovelier to grow than the old varieties, which were huge and thinly foliated. This one has a tidier habit and superabundant summer-long blooms. They're as easy to grow as any other shrub in your landscape, but need hardly anything from you.
Hardy in zones 5-9, they are oh-so-easy to grow in sunny landscapes and containers.
4. North Pole® Arborvitae
Native evergreen North Pole® arborvitaes make an excellent living screen or focal point in the landscape.
You’ll enjoy the rich green, evergreen foliage of North Pole® arborvitae and the privacy it provides all year round. This zone 3 hardy, columnar, native shrub was developed in Minnesota. It is fast-growing and more narrow than common varieties like Emerald Green, maturing to just 3-5 feet wide and 10-15 feet tall. And since it is more resistant to winter burn, its foliage keeps its dark green color even through the coldest months. Plant it in a sunny to partly sunny location and let it go to work for you, providing a screen along your back fence, acting as a living “fence”, or plant a matching pair by your front entrance.
5. Spilled Wine® Weigela
Surround your patio with low-growing, easy maintenance color using Spilled Wine® weigela shrubs.
If you’re looking for a mass of no-maintenance, season-long color for your landscape beds in sun or part sun, look no further than Spilled Wine® weigela. This low growing shrub reaches just 2-3 feet tall and 3 feet wide in zones 4-8, shorter than its popular cousin, Wine & Roses® weigela. It requires no pruning to keep its deep wine-red foliage in bounds, and hot magenta pink flowers appear every spring. Deer tend to leave weigela alone, but butterflies and hummingbirds enjoy its plentiful blooms.
Want to learn more about easy maintenance plants?
- Discover more easy maintenance plants for your landscape and containers here.
- Find out which Proven Winners annuals were rated the top 10 easiest to maintain here.
- See 15 easy plants to grow, including annuals, perennials, and shrubs.
- Explore a Pinterest board of Easy Garden Plants.
Patent Info: Double Play Doozie® Spiraea x 'NCSX2' USPP30953 CanPRB6979; Let's Dance Can Do!® Hydrangea macrophylla x serrata USPP32548 CanPBRAF; Azurri Blue Satin® Hibiscus syriacus USPP20563 CanPBR4391; North Pole® Thuja occidentalis USPP22174 CanPBR3912; Spilled Wine® Weigela florida USPP23781 CanPBR4655
