If you have ever dreamt of creating a year-round landscape garden, here are seven fine shrubs to start with. These shrubs bloom in late winter and are also important to early insect pollinators — native ground bees, bumble bees, and butterflies. In USDA hardiness zones 7-9, winter temperatures begin to moderate and some shrubs burst into floral life.

Chinese paper bush (Edgeworthia chrysantha) – a deciduous suckering shrub that typically grows to 4-6 feet tall and wide. In February
Tiny, apetalous, tubular, yellow flowers are densely packed flower clusters open in February. Short-petioled, lanceolate-oblong, dark green 3-5 inch long leaves are attractive (zones 6b-10).

Carolina Jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens) – sweetly scented, golden yellow flowers cover the cascading, fine textured foliage from February to April. Moderately deer resistant (zones 6-9).

Chinese Witchhazel (Hamamelis x intermedia) represent crossing two Asian witchhazels (H. japonica x H. mollis). Plant grows 6-12 feet tall and wide and suckers freely at the base. Recommended cultivars are ‘Diane’, ‘Jelena’, ‘Orange Beauty’, ‘Primavera’ and ‘Westerstede’. Moderately deer resistant (zones 5-9)

Winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) – small fragrant white flowers appear in midwinter on this 10-12 foot tall vigorous shrub. Note: rated “invasive Florida and Texas where winter temperatures are mild; not so much in zone 7 and colder areas further north (zone 4-10).

Wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox) – highly fragrant yellow/slight red blotched flowers appear in late January; prefers rich, acidic, moist, well-drained soils in part to full shade; 12 feet by 10 feet deciduous moderately drought tolerant shrub (Zones 6 to 9).

Sweetbox (Sarcococca hookeriana ‘Humilis’) – a suckering 4-6-foot evergreen shrub with numerous small fragrant white flowers set against glossy boxwood-like foliage; spreads very slowly by stolons in shady landscapes (Zones 6 to 9).

Winter daphne (Daphne odora) – an evergreen, densely branched,
3-4 feet tall shrub with rose-purple or white, fragrant flowers in mid- to late winter. Fragrant 2-inch long tubular flowers are a half-inch across and are usually white; pink or lavender varieties also available; long blooming in late winter and early spring (Zones 7-9).