Expert Picks You Can Plant Right Now
By Ava Green
Looking for a flowering shrub that delivers season after season? We asked our experts at Eising Garden Centre to share their top picks, the ones that customers and staff love most, and they delivered. Whether you’re looking for spring blooms, fall colour, wildlife and pollinator value, or a shrub to suit your space, there’s something on this list for every garden.
Fuji Cherry ‘Little Twist’, Prunus incisa ‘CarltonLT’
As an accent in a small garden, or planted in a grouping in a larger garden, this multi-stemmed shrub is a gem!
In early spring, crimson buds emerge before the leaves appear. Little Twist then produces clusters of lightly scented white, bell-shaped flowers with soft pink centres that grow along its stems, a stunning early-season display. It is a deciduous shrub, and leaves begin as green before shifting to coppery-bronze, then deepen to a rich burgundy in fall. Smooth, dark red bark adds interest in the winter once the leaves are gone.
This slow-growing, multi-stemmed shrub makes a striking feature in your garden.
Best for: Small gardens, accent planting, four-season interest. | Sun: Full sun | Mature size: 6 ft. tall × 6 ft. wide
Downy Serviceberry, Amelanchier canadensis
One of the most rewarding native shrubs you can plant, Downy Serviceberry earns its place in the garden from spring right through to fall. Showy clusters of fragrant white flowers in early spring, followed by small, sweet, edible purple-blue berries in early summer that are wonderful for making jam and an absolute favourite for birds. Come fall, the foliage puts on a spectacular show in shades of yellow, red, and orange.
As a bonus, choosing a native plant like Serviceberry supports local pollinators and wildlife, making it as ecologically valuable as it is beautiful. It works well as a specimen plant on it’s own, in a grouping or hedge, or naturalized in a larger landscape.
Best for: Wildlife gardens, naturalized areas, multi-season interest | Sun: Full sun to part shade | Mature size: 20 ft. tall × 10 ft. wide
Amur Privet, Ligustrum Amurense
Amur Privet
When fast growth and privacy matter, Amur Privet is one of the best choices available. This dense, dark green shrub produces white flower panicles in late spring and small black berries in fall. It responds exceptionally well to pruning after it blooms, making it an ideal candidate for a formal or informal hedge. If you need to fill a space quickly and create structure in your garden, this is a reliable, low-maintenance option.
Best for: Hedging, screening, fast coverage | Sun: Full sun to part shade | Mature size: 12–15 ft. tall × 8–15 ft. wide
Viburnum ‘Fragrant Snowball’, Viburnum Opulus ‘Roseum’
Few shrubs stop people in their tracks quite like Fragrant Snowball Viburnum in full bloom. Large, rounded clusters of sweetly scented white flowers cover the plant in spring, creating a display that’s hard to match. While it doesn’t produce fruit, it earns its place again in the fall when the foliage transitions to rich shades of purple.
Pruning after it blooms will help to keep it a manageable size and encourage healthy new growth. It’s also available as a standard, or tree form, which matures to a more compact 6 to 8 feet tall.
Sun or part shade are best for this deciduous shrub, a beautiful, solitary accent plant for the garden growing 12 feet high and 10 feet wide. As a standard, it is smaller, maturing at 6 to 8 feet tall and 5 to 6 feet wide.
Best for: Specimen planting, cottage gardens, fragrance | Sun: Full sun to part shade | Mature size: 12 ft. tall × 10 ft. wide (shrub); 6–8 ft. tall (standard)
Snowbelle Mockorange, Philadelphus ‘Snowbelle’
Don’t let its compact size fool you; when Snowbelle Mockorange blooms in early summer, it puts on a big show. This dense, mounded shrub is blanketed in sweetly fragrant double white blooms that are absolutely irresistible to bees and butterflies. Once the flowers fade, its rich, dark-green deciduous foliage makes it a lovely backdrop for other blooming plants in the border.
Growing just four feet tall and wide, it’s one of the best choices for smaller beds, borders and foundation plantings. It prefers full sun but handles part shade as well.
Best for: Small borders, foundation planting, fragrance | Sun: Full sun to part shade | Mature size: 4 ft. tall × 4 ft. wide
More Flowering Shrubs Worth Exploring
This is just the beginning! At Eising Garden Centre, we also carry a wonderful selection of Azalea, Eastern Redbud, Kwanzan Flowering Cherry, Hydrangea, Dogwood, Butterfly Bush, Beauty Bush, Lilac, Rose of Sharon, Forsythia, and Potentilla, to name a few.
The best way to find the right flowering shrub for your garden is to come in and see them in person, and right now is the perfect time to plant. Stop by and chat with Zach or Donna, who are always happy to help you find exactly what you’re looking for, based on your space, soil, and vision. We’re here to help you make the most of every corner of your garden!
Planting new trees into the landscape is always a worthwhile investment! Not only are they pretty to look at and provide cool shade on hot days, but they add a pretty significant increase in property value. Watching trees transition through each season is always a delight, but trees in autumn are especially beautiful. But did you know that autumn is actuaslly the perfect time to plant many of our favourite trees?
The root ball of a tree is quite sensitive. After all, it acts like their “brain” or central nervous system, so if you stress those roots out too much, you’re going to have a very tired looking tree on your hands. Here in Southern Ontario, if you plant in late spring or in the middle of summer, those high temperatures may be a bit too much for the roots to handle. The cool, mild temperatures of autumn are just right for transplanting.
6 Trees You Can Plant In Fall
Want to liven up your landscape with some colourful foliage? These ornamental trees for fall are so distinctly beautiful in their own different ways—it’s hard to pick just one!
Tulip Tree
This tree has so much style, and it grows surprisingly quickly, so if you’re a bit of an impatient gardener, you’ll love watching the tulip tree develop over the years. It gets its name from its gorgeous spring flowers, which you probably have guessed, look quite similar to the classic tulip! While it puts on quite a show in spring, it has a reputation for being especially beautiful in fall, when its sunny golden foliage turns a fiery orange shade.
Because the tulip tree grows so quickly, its branches tend to be a bit thin, so you may want to put it in a spot that gets some protection from the wind. Just make sure it gets at least some partial sun and isn’t too shaded, or else its leaves may turn brown. Regular pruning of your tulip tree and cleanup of any damaged branches will help keep things neat and help prevent pests from showing up.
Autumn Blaze Maple
There’s something so charming about a giant maple, and the blazing red leaves of this maple tree in autumn look so classically Canadian! It’s a perennial favourite, because it’s actually a cross between the red maple and the silver maple, and it seems to have taken on the best traits of both. Overall, it has stunning colours, a nice, balanced branching habit, and pretty sturdy limbs despite being a very fast grower.
Autumn blaze maples need full sun to grow to their best potential, but the condition of the soil is much less critical. This variety is actually quite drought tolerant and doesn’t mind poorer soils—just be sure you water it very regularly for those first couple of months after planting to help the roots establish.
Eastern Redbud
You’ll always look forward to spring in your yard with this show-stopping beauty around! It bursts into bright magenta blossoms and looks like it’s straight off the pages of a fairytale book. They don’t grow especially big—about 30 feet tall and wide at its largest—so if you’re looking for something a little smaller scale, the eastern redbud will suit the landscape nicely.
Ideally, you’ll want to plant your tree in a spot that gets direct sunlight in the morning, but a bit of shade in the afternoon, so a North or East-facing spot in the yard would work best. Plant it at least 8 feet away from any buildings to give it adequate room to spread, and try to put it in a spot that isn’t at the bottom of any slopes. This could cause too much moisture to collect near its roots, and this tree doesn’t like to sit in soggy soil. So long as the soil is quick-draining and isn’t piled up around the trunk of the tree, you aren’t likely to encounter any problems.
Emerald Cedar
We had to add a nice evergreen into the mix! Having vibrant foliage to admire year-round is always such a treat. This narrow variety is upright and handsome, reaching around 12 feet at maturity, so it’s super easy to integrate into the landscape and works particularly well as a hedge border. Its emerald green foliage is finely textured and lush all year long; it’s so classically refined!
This evergreen prefers full to partial sun. It likes well-drained soils, but isn’t very drought-tolerant and prefers moderate moisture, so if we go through a long stretch without rain, you’ll definitely want to water the roots with the hose to keep conditions comfortable. You aren’t likely to have too many pests issues with the emerald cedar, but in December, you may want to wrap it up with burlap to prevent the foliage from getting winter burn.
Heritage Birch
The bark of the birch tree is so uniquely beautiful and textured—we love the way it naturally peels off like paper, revealing fresh new bark underneath. The mature bark of the heritage birch almost has a pinkish tint to it, revealing creamy white new growth underneath. Growing up to around 70 feet tall and wide, it’s quite a sight to behold when grown with multiple trunks, instead of being trained into a single-trunked tree.
The heritage birch actually prefers its soil to be a bit more on the moist side and is more tolerant of clay soils compared to many other common landscape trees. It’s also quite heat tolerant, so as long as it gets some extra water, it shouldn’t be too fazed by a summer heatwave. If you’re going to prune your heritage birch, wait until fall to do so—in spring, the sap is a lot runnier and will make quite a mess!
Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry
This compact tree loves to show off its personality, covered with pretty white flowers every spring, and outdoing itself with orangey-red fall foliage. It produces berries from late spring and into summer, and it has smooth grayish-silver bark. It’s a nice small tree at just 25 feet maximum height. This is a great shade choice for small-scale landscapes. This serviceberry is suitable for planting under power lines.
Serviceberries grow best in full to part sun, and should not be allowed to dry out. This serviceberry is relatively low maintenance, and a beautiful addition to any yard.
Ready to plant some new trees at home? We’ve still got plenty in stock at Eising, and if you aren’t feeling super confident in your own tree-planting abilities, our experts are happy to provide landscaping services. Visit us in-store, or shop online to see our selection of trees that are ready for fall planting, and if you’d like to arrange for home delivery or curbside pickup, we can make that happen!