
Plants For Spring Colour
Welcome Spring with Open Arms
Spring is on her way…at least she is here in the UK.
I want to talk about some staple plants for spring colour, perennial plants and shrubs that will soon start to give glorious colour, fragrance and joy to your spring garden and with love and a little attention will continue to do so year-on-year. We’ll also look at some ideas for container planting Ideas for Spring Containers that will give an instant burst of freshness to patios, yards, and window boxes. So let’s talk about some of the best plants for spring colour.
When you see any plants here that you like, click on the links or images to find out how to buy.
At this time of year many of the online garden and plants stores have sales on so it’s a great time to find some blooming good bargains.
What Can You Grow For Spring?
Which trees, and shrubs give pleasure by flowering early in the spring time?
Two of my all time favourites are Magnolia and Camellia, there are 100,s of varieties to choose from. They both offer colour, texture, scent and interest. Whether you have a large or small outdoor space or even just containers there is a variety which is suitable.
Magnolia Stellata or Star Magnolia is a small tree, or it can be grown as a shrub. It comes into bud in February before the leaves and will be in full bloom through March to April, the large white showy flowers are delicate and star shaped. They grow to about 2.5m to 3m high and 2.5m to 3m width. I have one in my garden under planted with spring daffodil, crocus, snowdrops; it looks spectacular. Hardy to -20 degrees but flower buds may get frost damage.
Stellata…truly a star,
Here for a visit, doesn’t stay long,
Like a brief, beautiful love affair
Then she’s gone…

Other varieties can grow much larger and have star shaped or tulip shaped flowers in a range of white, pink, purple and yellow. Their flowering season ranges from early spring to summer, they are mainly deciduous but there are some evergreen varieties such as Grandiflora.
Camellias are also coming into flower now, they are perfect plants for spring colour, their pink rose like blooms provide a welcome splash of colour from pale, almost white pinks to deep rose/salmon pinks and lemony yellow. These are acid loving plants so they need to have ericaceous soil. They can be grown in containers provided they have the correct compost and plenty of drainage.
They are woodland plants so find them a shady spot in your garden and whenever possible use rain water for watering. They will be perfectly happy with these conditions. Hardy to -20 degrees but flower buds may get frost damage.

Syringa/Lilac trees offer the most delicious fragrance for your spring garden. Beautiful trees or shrubs and dwarf varieties are available that are happy in containers with white, lilac or deep purple flowers, the bees and pollinators love them! Planted in a sunny spot with good drainage they will flower their heart out. They flower on old wood so keep pruning to a minimum immediately after flowering is finished. Any dead or diseased wood needs to be pruned out to keep your shrub healthy. Hardy to -15 degrees.
Dicentra or Bleeding heart is a deciduous perennial with a shrub forming habit, it dies back each year, its delicate feathery foliage is just starting to appear now. Pretty heart shaped pink or white flowers are borne along gracefully arching stems.

There are so many plants to choose from to give spring colour and interest to your garden
Perennial Plants and Bulbs
Spring time is of course the time for perennials and bulbs,Perennial Plants. First Year Flowering nothing heralds spring quite like a swathe of golden daffodils, tete a tete, crocus, snowdrops, hyacinth, tulips; the list goes on. These are bulbs that show up every year and make perfect displays for borders or containers. Easy to grow they delight the senses, I await them with eager anticipation. They are some of the most rewarding spring flowers.Gardening for Well-being, Why Gardening is Good for your Health.

I have spoken of Iris and Hellebore in previous posts… Plants for Winter Colour and
Summer Flowering bulbs... I can’t stress enough how essential these are for me and my garden, Hellebore are quite delightful and have been in flower from the end of January and will continue through spring.
Iris is one of the most elegant bulbs and comes in such a wide variety of colour combinations there is something for every garden style and scheme.
Perennial plants such as Bergenia, Pulmonaria, Aubretia, Alpines, Pansies, Primroses and Viola are all starting to put on their spring time show and again there are varieties to suit all tastes, Bergenia have lovely clusters of pink flowers that peek out from large oval green, variegated, red, burgundy leaves. I cut some of the leaves away so that I can see the flowers better. Pulmonaria is a marvelous ground cover plant with dainty, pink, lilac, blue or white flowers.
Many Ground Cover Plants are perfect for providing a wealth of spring colour, spreading carpets of foliage and pretty blooms. Check out my article of 20 best flowering ground cover plants for inspiration.

A Wide Choice Of Plants
The list is endless! Such a wide choice of plants, shrubs, trees and bulbs. I can only mention but a few but I hope there is something here to inspire you to plant something for spring that will continue to give you pleasure for many years.Hardy Evergreen Flowering Shrubs
If I have inspired you to grow some spring colour in your gardens and you found this article useful and interesting please share with friends and family.
Any thoughts, views or questions can be added in the comments box below, I always reply as soon as possible.
Happy Gardening
What a great article about spring flowers. I just moved to a new house last summer and haven’t done anything with our small yard here but I had 3 bleeding hearts bushes at our old house, 2 pink and 1 white, and they were always so gorgeous! I totally miss them, I guess I’ll have to start shopping around to fill up my muddy and bare yard this spring.
Thank you Missy for your kind comments, I hope you do find some Dicentra plants, it will be a good start and pretty addition to your new garden. If you need any other ideas or help get in touch.
Louise
It’s nice to come across a site that has information and ideas in a well informed, informal manner.
I am new to gardening and will take away some ideas from this.
Thanks for the inspiration
Thank you for your comments
Dear Louise
Thank you very much for your fantastic website. It is amazing that you show people where to start and what steps to make towards their dream-like garden. I hope more people will know about your website and follow your guidance.
Kind regards,
Andrey
Dear Andrey, thank you so much for your comments I truly appreciate them.
My parents have a huge backyard which eventually meets with woodlands and they want to do something with the currently empty piece of grass. I’d love to share this article with them for some ideas on planting for the spring. They already garden, but it’s toward the front of the house, so this would definitely make for a breathaking view from their back porch during those spring/summertime weekends in the bounding Upper Ohio Valley.
Hello Todd, thank you for your comment,
One great thing about developing a new garden is being able to “borrow” the surrounding landscape. I wish your parents well with their back garden, the woodland backdrop will look lovely during every season.
Lovely website Louise, brings to mind the day you turned up, armed with a fork & various other implements, and tackled the compacted clay soil of my very neglected front garden. Within 2-3 hours that garden was dug over, weeded, plants moved, and looked so different. The primroses now stand out against the dark soil instead of struggling to be noticed among the weeds.
You’ve done so well with this website, it’s so informative, well set out, and friendly. So many “professional” websites make the reader feel talked down to – not yours. Well done and good luck…..and THANK YOU!!
Thank you so much Gill,
I’m pleased you are happy with the work we did on your front garden
Hi Louise,
Great article, thanks for sharing.
I am very new to gardening as I only just moved into my first house with a garden in London.
Your website is excellent for tips for beginners aswell as experts. I am going to forward on your post to my friends also who have a garden and could definitely benefit from your tips.
Thanks again for sharing and I’ll let you now how I get on.
Tom
Hey Louise,
I love your website. It’s beautiful and full of so much information! I bet your yard is beautiful!!! I love flowers and trees because not only are they beautiful but they give such awesome fragrances. My favorite are magnolia trees!
Hello Tom,
thank you for your great comment, I do hope you find lots of inspiration here.
Good Luck with your new garden and if you ever need help, tip, ideas don’t hesitate to get in touch here or drop a line to info@plantsbulbsseeds.com
Thank you too for sharing with your friends
Happy Gardening!
What a nice post you wrote! I really enjoyed reading it and I could not be silent about your post so I decided to leave my comment here and say Thank You! For sharing this quality post with others.
Actually this is exactly the information that I was looking for about planting in spring and when I landed to your website and read this post, it answered all my questions in details.
So I’m happy that you decided to write about this topic and share it with people. It’s very useful and can definitely be used as a great source for what we can do grow in spring.
I will come back to your website again for sure and I’m looking forward to read your new posts.)
Thanks!
Hello Ali, thank you so much for your comments.
I am happy to know that you enjoyed reading my post and hope that it inspires you with ideas for your garden.
Happy gardening
Louise
I absolutely love this insightful article because it is full of great information. This is fascinating and intriguing to meYou did an excellent job of providing education and resources; The article was well written and easy to understand.
I have always wanted to learn about gardening and this is what you have provided in a giffy.
Hello,
thank you for your comments, I am inspired and encouraged by what you have said.
I hope I can continue to inspire you to garden.
Louise
There are many nice beautiful flowers plant one can plant for spring
spring flowering bulbs such as snowdrops, bluebells, daffodils, tulips, crocuses and anemones can be planted.but I like to plant Biennials and perennials because they sown earlier and also can also be transplanted and sweet peas and hardy annuals can be sown in pots.
Hello and thank you for your comments.
I totally agree with you re the biennials and perennials, these will be the focus of future blogs. I like to write in tune with the seasons and there are so many lovely plants to consider.
Louise
this is a plant i love so much Star magnolia is an oval to rounded shrub or small tree that will grow15 to 20 feet in height with a spread of 10 to 15 feet. The habit is a very upright conical crown when young; crown spreads some with age, Fruit is a cone-like, twisted, aggregate of follicles, 2 to 2 ½ inches long. Fruit matures in late summer
Hello,
Thank you for your comments on the Magnolia, she truly is a beautiful tree.
Louise
Thanks for adding to my knowledge on planting in springs I can say I have learnt alot thing or two from this post at least I can boast about this post improving my gardening though I haven’t planted almost all of the shrubs mentioned on this post but I would love to, because I can only imagine the beauty it’s going to bring. Thanks for this amazing post.
Hello and thank you for your comments.
I hope you are inspired to grow some of these plants you will have years of joy from them.
Happy Gardening
Louise
Great article! The content is superb! My inner poet automatically wakes up. In the Indian subcontinent, spring is known as the king of season. After the dryness of the winter, trees become greenish. Characters have an amazing form all around. My emotion knows no bounds by the description of various flowers with pictures. Although the flowers mentioned above are not seen here, it is very nice to know about many flowers. Thanks to Louise from the core of my heart, it is a great gift to present such as a full-blown article.
Hello and thank you for your kind comments,
I also am a poet, inspired by nature , Seasons, plants and flowers. I am hoping to include poems within my blogs or in a separate page.
Nature really is a wonderful inspiration
Best Wishes
Louise
Thank you for writing about flowers. While I am living in tropical country, my cousin live in US and she really likes to decorate her house with flowers. I remember she loves Camelia, so she will be delighted that it certainly suitable for Spring season there. Welcome to the spring season 🙂
Hello and Thank you for your comments, which country do you live in? Tropical plants and flowers are wonderful, we can grow some of them here in the Uk but most need to be in glasshouses/hothouses.
Thank you for sharing my article with your sister.
Louise
I truly loved your choices here. They all are spectacular. I just love spring! And all the magnificent plants that wake up with it! My favorite is the bleeding heart, and I learned something new today. Its real name the “Dicentra”! I am writing this down as I want to impress my wife and tell her that I am actively researching other plants to garnish our garden. We have a wide variety of pansies, which I have been transplanting every year and I can’t wait for the tulips to wake up!
Our backyard is now a big flower garden and I truly agree with your last statement, the list is endless and it does bring pleasure just sitting in the sun and looking out at these wonders of nature. Thanks for the very inspiring article, I am looking up some of your suggestions to add to our variety.
Hello Denis,
Thank you so much for your kind comments, I hope your wife is duly impressed with your new found plant name knowledge. I have to confess I prefer some of the common names, they are much more lyrical, not to mention easier to pronounce! Pansies are so colourful and reliable.
Happy Gardening
Louise
Hi Louise,
Thank you for sharing this great informational article spring flowers. It is really a nice post.I am new to gardening and will take away some ideas. It is amazing that you show people where to start and what steps to make towards their dream-like garden. I love flowers and trees because not only are they beautiful but they give such awesome fragrances. I will share this article with my friends.
Hello,
Thank you for your comments and for sharing with your friends.
There are so many benefits from plants and flowers, colour and fragrance are but a few.
These flowers are pretty good, though I don’t have a particular favourite in mind, when it comes to flowers but every good and attractive one of them can be amazing to me. I love flowers and I can grow any plant for spring colours. The major challenge here is getting a good one first.
It’s really useful article about flows. I just have been married for several months, and my wife likes to plant flows. We bought many kinds of flows such as camellia, azalea and jasmine. But it was more difficult than I thought. Just two weeks, camellia died. We need to know more infos about every kind of flow we want to have. I’m glad to share this article to my wife, I think she will like it.
Hello and thank your for your comments, congratulations on your marriage.
I am sorry to hear that you lost the Camellia, I do you try again with one, with the right conditions they can bring colour and interest year on year. Jasmine and Azalea are lovely too.
Thank you for sharing this article with your wife.
Louise
Hi! Yes, spring is around the corner and it’s nice (and very exciting to make preparations). These preparations involve which plants we’re going to plant. As you have stated, the list is endless. I really like the Viola in your picture and the end of your post. They bring good memories. So, I’ll plant them this year. I’ll also plant Magnolias and Alpines. Thank you very much for giving us all these options! 🙂
Hello Henry, thank you for your comments, spring time brings out the gardener in all of us. Violas are lovely and so colourful.
Louise
Hi Louise,
Thanks for sharing this excellent article. Flowers are the gifts of the Creator to increase the beauty of the earth. The importance of flowers is also important for a loved one to pay tribute to a loved one or for a wedding, birthdays, meetings, seminars and special days. The house is used by the white house to decorate the house. There are many demanding flowers in our daily lives. Nature decorates the flower with its beauty. Apart from beauty, there are more types of flowers used. Flowers also have various health benefits. In this article, we learned about the importance of flowers, the beauty of beauty. Camellia flowers have some different qualities of my very favorite Camellia plays an effective role in removing intestinal gases. Removes skin burns and itching and removes stress. Also, it removes facial ulcers, stomach aches and muscle pain. I’ll make a flower garden on the roof of the house. I’ll definitely share it with my family and friends.
Hi,
Thank you for your comments, yes there are endless health benefits from flowers and plants, all the old remedies were taken from Nature and I much prefer to use them.
Any garden anywhere is the perfect space for sharing with friend sand family
Thank you for these spring plants that not only give colour and beauty but also fragrance. I am always amused by the colors of leaves and flowers and I find something deep meaning in my life as a person when I see plants with different colors and they too emit fragrance around us. The only difference in me is that I don’t have a garden to have these intentionally rared for and expect them to bloom on springtime.
There’s one thing interesting with these flowering shrubs and trees, do they attract bees?
Hello,
Thank you for your comments. If you don’t have a garden, maybe you have a windowsill, balcony perhaps to have a few pots of flowers?
Yes they all attract bees and many other pollinators