Best Viburnum Shrubs: Our List of 10 Flowering Bushes

If you want to start a horticultural fight, opine loudly at your next plant party about the best viburnums to grow. These flowering shrubs provoke strong opinions among the botanically inclined, and things could get ugly, fast. Dessert might be thrown. But consider our disciplined list of ten and hear us out. And bear in mind that there are almost 200 species to choose from, let alone cultivars and hybrids. Whether you want fruit, flowers, fall foliage (or all three), there is probably a viburnum for your gardening personality: extrovert, shy, down-to-earth, elegant, rambunctious, shape-shifting, or fragrantly alluring?

Here they are.

Photography by Marie Viljoen.

But first: Why plant viburnums at all?

• A range of sizes means that viburnums can stand in for trees in small spaces.
• Multiple seasons of interest, from spring flowers to fall foliage and fruit (except in sterile species).
• Flowering times that range from late winter to early summer, so you can build a collection.
• The shrubs have interesting foliage with texture that rewards the detail-oriented gardener.
• Viburnums that bear fruit offer ornamental interest in fall and winter, as well as food for the birds (and humans).
• Kaleidoscopic fall colors, depending on the species you choose, and how much sun it receives.
• Persistent winter fruits that feed birds when there is little else available.

1. Viburnum × bodnantense ‘Dawn’

At the end of winter, the exceptional fragrance of this tree-like hybrid viburnum is sweetly uplifting. It is a cross between V. farreri and V. grandiflorum, whose clusters of flowers start as deep rose-colored buds before paling in full bloom. The tubular flowers make you look twice, wondering whether a lilac has gone mad and erupted while there is snow on the ground. Flowering on bare branches, this earliest of viburnums is elegantly dramatic and more tolerant of frost than its grandiflorum parent. Usually sterile, few or no fruit will form, helping to ensure that this non-native viburnum does not spread. Viburnum × bodnantense is hardy from USDA zones 4 – 8.

2. Korean spice viburnum, Viburnum carlesii

If scent is your thing, a must-have viburnum is the intensely fragrant Koreanspice. In mid spring its deep pink buds open into pale pink flowers that shift gradually into pure white. The flowers can be turned into an equally fragrant syrup, fermented wild soda, or perfumed honey (simply substitute the flowers in our Lilac Honey Recipe). Koreanspice is a slow-growing shrub that responds well to clipping (like a boxwood) and makes a showy ball of flowers when spring rolls round. Be sure to prune and shape it right after blooming, since all viburnums bloom on new wood (so, if you prune in fall, you will miss the next spring’s flowers). Extremely cold-hardy Viburnum carlesii is hardy from zones 2 – 8.