This year, the first shrub to bloom in my garden was winter jasmine (Jasminium nudiflorum). Glowing yellow flowers did not appear in winter as the name suggests but in the first week of April, not long after a foot of snow melted off its branches. This is an easy shrub for any soil in full sun or part shade.
Until I added winter jasmine last spring, the first shrub to brave April’s capricious weather was always white forsythia (Abeliophyllum distichum), a rangy shrub with fragrant white flowers that tough out the coldest weather. In the 20 years it has resided in my garden it has never once failed to bloom, enduring temperatures of minus 30 degrees with aplomb. While not what anyone would call shapely, white forsythia is tolerant of a wide range of cultural conditions and is easily hidden in a mixed planting, where it disappears when out of bloom.
Forsythia, the real thing, is one of those joys of spring I prefer to admire in someone else’s garden. True, the highlighter yellow flowers are arresting against a landscape still mostly brown, gray and tan. The problem is nondescript foliage and ungainly form-branches stick out every which way. This one-hit wonder of a shrub wows its audience for a week in early spring but is hard to appreciate the rest of the year. I didn’t bite until variegated-leafed versions hit the mass market last year and one snuck into my cart at a local garden center.
Creeping mahonia (M. repens) is so ubiquitous in Front Range gardens and landscapes that we tend to overlook it entirely. But this is one tough shrub that deserves more respect. Evergreen holly-like leaves turn burgundy in winter. Flowers are 3-inch wide clusters of soft yellow, followed by blue fruit. Birds brought the first plants to my garden along a concrete sidewalk where little else would grow. Low and spreading, this is one of the few groundcovers that actually thrive in dry shade.
Too large for my garden, at 10 feet tall and as wide, are the fragrant viburnums (V. x bodnantense and V. farreri), which can bloom as early as January in mild winters. In some years, the flower buds freeze, but a good year is worth the wait. Then deliciously fragrant pink pompoms decorate bare branches. There is a dwarf version (V. farreri “Nanum”) at only 3 feet, a perfect fit for even the smallest garden.
Witch hazels can also bloom in January in Denver’s gardens. In my experience, they are better enjoyed in the Northwest, where yellow or rusty red flowers make individual shrubs stand out like beacons in winter’s bare deciduous woodlands. Here the frost-damaged flowers mostly look like sad, wet confetti. Still, if I had room I’d probably try to fit one into my garden.
When it comes to four-season appeal, none of these is a truly outstanding shrub compared with the fare that graces our gardens by late April and May. But in early spring anything that blooms is more than welcome.
Marcia Tatroe’s most recent book is “Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West,” ($29.95, Johnson Books). E-mail her at mtatroe@q.com.
