Yellow Flowering Shrubs For Any Yard

Winter is too long to do without yellow flowering bushes in the garden. They fill the backyard with spring sunshine, even when it’s cloudy. 

If you are just putting in your shrubs, you’ll have more than a few excellent choices for shrubs with yellow spring flowers. Read on for good recommendations.

Bushes with Yellow Flowers 

You can find yellow bushes everywhere, from the coldest to the hottest regions of the country. One popular yellow bush is forsythia (Forsythia x intermedia), a cold hardy bush that fills with brilliant yellow flowers in early April. Once the display is done, the dark green, leafy bushes blend into the landscape nicely or create a lovely, informal hedge. Plant forsythia in full sun sites in USDA zones 4 and above.

For even cooler climates, look to shrubby cinquefoil (Potentilla fruticose), hardy in cold climates down to USDA zone 6. They grow to 4 feet (1.3m.) tall and wide, their branches laden with canary-yellow blossoms from early summer through autumn. Plant in full sun with well-draining soil preferred. But this species tolerates both wet and dry sites. 

Yellow Flowering Shrubs

Shrubby St. John’s-wort (Hypericum prolificum) is a small shrub that rarely gets taller than 3 feet (1 m). But that doesn’t stop this mounding bush from offering plenty of ornamental value. The dense, upright shrub produces large, bright-yellow flowers in late spring and early summer. And its green foliage turns yellow-green in fall. 

For something taller, look to the cornelian cherry dogwood (Cornus mas), an adaptable, durable, and relatively pest-free yellow flowering shrub. It could even be called a small tree since it grows to 25 feet (8m.) tall and 20 feet (7m.) wide. This dogwood produces small, yellow flowers in early spring. The round clusters of blossoms develop into berry-like fruit that turn bright red in late summer. The cornelian cherry dogwood is hardy in USDA Hardiness Zones 4 to 8. 

Flowering Shrubs Yellow 

If you want a flowering shrub that your neighbors aren’t likely to have, underused Japanese kerria (Kerria japonica) might be just the ticket. This early-flowering, deciduous shrub is good in shady backyards where it blooms profusely. Flowers look like old-fashioned roses with five petals, a bright golden yellow. Bloom time is early spring. 

What about spicebush (Lindera benzoin)? This shrub blooms in early spring, its branches filling with clusters of tiny yellow flowers. They only last about two weeks but are extremely valuable to early pollinators.

Any of these shrubs will fill your need for yellow blossoms, year after year.