25 Flowering Shrubs for Full Sun

A sun-splashed yard delivers big color when you fill it with easy-growing flowering shrubs that thrive in full sun. Sun-loving bushes can dress your landscape with beautiful blooms, colorful leaves and season-long style that will have you wondering why you didn’t plant ‘em sooner. Not sure which shrubs thrive in sun? Find the full sun shrub your yard needs from our collection of favorites.

Sonic Bloom Pink weigela (Weigela florida ‘Bokrasopin’) is a reblooming weigela that delivers a stunning flower show in late spring to early summer, followed by a steady march of blooms until fall frost. The pink flowers are a hummingbird favorite. Plants thrive in full sun, growing 4 to 5 feet tall and wide at maturity. Hardy in Zones 4-8.

Give your garden a dose of drama with the dark tones of Black Lace elderberry (Sambucus nigra ‘Eva’). Lacy leaves add a fine texture to planting beds in full sun and white flowers fade to form immune-boosting elderberries. Black Lace grows 6 to 8 feet tall and wide. Many gardeners treat it as a perennial, cutting it to the ground in early spring. You can find smaller and upright, narrow varieties of dark-leaf elderberry at garden centers. Hardy in Zones 4 to 7.

Fill your yard with the sweet perfume of orange blossoms. That’s the fragrance that mock orange flowers release when they open in late spring to early summer. Look for varieties with double or single flowers. Plant mock orange (Philadelphus coronarius) along a sunny walkway or patio where you can savor the fragrance. Prune immediately after flowering. Hardy in Zones 4 to 8.

Beautiful and versatile, shrub roses can fill many roles in the landscape, including as a foundation planting, hedge or mixed border plant. Shrub roses grow best in full sun. These two varieties are modern English shrub roses with rich rose fragrance: white ‘Susan Williams-Ellis’ and pink ‘The Mayflower’. Both grow disease-free, with an average size of 4.5 feet tall and 3.5 feet wide. Hardy in Zones 4 to 11.