Blooming Shrubs Provide Backdrop for Yard Parties

Memorial Day always signals the beginning of summer, vacations, graduations and barbecues. It also means warmer weather for entertaining outdoors.

Is your garden ready to show forth its best flowering self? With a little advance planning this month, your yard can have lots of colorful blooming shrubs to put on a permanent show year after year.

Consider planting hibiscus with its large, showy flowers. Hybridizers have found ways to improve the flowers to include doubles and multicolored blooms. Some of the plants grow in a compact manner, which makes them a good choice for small spaces and containers.

In coastal and northern areas, hibiscus should be planted in a protected spot.

Daylilies are another choice. You can choose from maroons, pinks, yellows, oranges and whites to complement your garden. Daylilies will take full sun in coastal areas and partial shade in the hot areas of the state.

Star jasmine will add not only a blanket of creamy white flowers in the summer but also a heavenly fragrance. Plant some near the pool or hot tub.

Speaking of fragrance, we should add gardenias. “Mystery” gardenias have the largest flowers. The plant tends to be rangy and reach about six to eight feet. If you like the idea of gardenias but haven’t the room for a large plant, consider the “Veitchii” variety. It is a compact plant reaching about four feet with lots of 1 1/2-inch flowers.

And there are lots of other choices: plumbago, abelia, bougainvillea and viburnum, to mention a few.