12 White Flowering Shrubs

 Beautiful white flowering shrubs

If you love white flowers, good news! We found white flowering shrubs for every landscape. And many of these plants produce fruit to attract birds.

1. White Flowering Shrubs: Mock Orange

These easy-going white flowering shrubs can be grown in a variety of soils and light levels - just avoid wet, poorly drained patches. Choose a cultivar with hardy flower buds in your region. Many cultivars are small, but some reach 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide. Try Illuminati Tower for towers of white flowers with yellow centers.

2. Buttonbush

Watch as bees, butterflies and hummingbirds flock to these fragrant, spherical white flowering shrubs. Buttonbush is a host plant for many species of caterpillars. The round fruit lasts all winter, providing food for a variety of birds. Grow in full to part sun and moist soil. It grows over 6 feet tall and wide.

3. Oakleaf hydrangea

Oakleaf hydrangea gets its name from its distinctive oaklike leaves, which stand out from other hydrangeas and provide true color in the fall. A carefree shrub that reaches 6 feet tall, bears large cone-shaped flowers in summer. Long-lasting blooms remain beautiful even after fading, and make good cut flowers.

4. Virginia Sweetspire

Virginia sweetspire's white flowers, giving off a mild fragrance, attract hummingbirds, bees and butterflies. Plant it in sun or shade and in moist, acidic soil. Sweetspire grows 3 to 6 feet tall and wide. Choose Henry's Garnet for exceptional flowering or smaller Little Henry for tight spaces.

5. Summersweet

Attract hummingbirds, butterflies and bees with the fragrant flowers of summersweet. These white flowering shrubs tolerate both shade and moist soil. If you don't remove the root suckers, they will form colonies perfect for naturalization. Summersweet grows 4 to 8 feet tall and 4 to 6 feet wide. For a more compact cultivar, try Sugartina crystallina.

6. New Jersey Tea

Growing 2 to 3 feet tall and wide, this compact white flowering shrub attracts many types of pollinators, including butterflies and native bees. You may see a few hummingbirds visit. Better yet, the deer will ignore it. New Jersey tea's deep root system prevents it from succumbing to many difficult-to-manage conditions.

7. Tianshan seven-son flower

A year-round attraction, this is a smaller, more compact version of the Heptacodeum. The bark is pretty, but this shrub really shines in late summer when it blooms in clusters of seven white flowers — hence the name No.

8. Firedance Dogwood

This four-season beauty adds year-round beauty to any rain garden. White spring flowers turn into white berries that attract birds. The show continues in fall, when the leaves turn reddish-purple and eventually reveal bright red stems.

9. Chokeberry

This native shrub has it all—white spring flowers, glossy green leaves, bold red fall foliage, and winter fruit. Antioxidant-rich berries keep you plump. Birds are also left alone in mid to late winter when other food sources are scarce.

10. Elderberry

Give this shrub plenty of room to stretch and grow; It reaches 5 to 12 feet in height and width. Then watch as both butterflies and bees flock to the white flowers and devour the ripe fruit. Although it prefers full sun and moist soil, an elderberry shrub will tolerate dry conditions once it is established.

11. Rose of Sharon

Rose of Sharon is a hibiscus plant to grow in case others miss you. It reaches 8 to 12 feet tall but takes good pruning. The large flowers, which come in white, red, pink, purple and bicolor, appear from mid-summer to frost. Or for an earlier show, try one of the different foliage cultivars.

12. Ninepark

The mature stems of this cheerful deciduous plant peel or peel back to reveal red and light brown inner bark. Try ginger wine. These white flowering shrubs grow up to 6 feet tall and wide with exceptional, orange spring foliage that turns burgundy in fall. This easy-to-grow native plant does best in full sun and adapts to most soil types.