Spring is known for colourful bulbs and primula but there are many top shrubs that provide great colour in spring.

Forsythia The yellow flowering twiggy shrub that can grow to 10 feet. It flowers before the leaves form and is a strong, bright  yellow. Large blossom varieties are now being cultivated but either way you get a mass of bloom.

Rhododendron Evergreen shrubs of many forms and sizes from 12 inches to 12 foot. Some bloom from March and some in May. Many sizes and colors exist and one range is named after Snowwhite’s seven dwarfs.

Ribes sanguineum Red Flowering Currant 6′ by 4’  This easy deciduous shrub flowers in panicles of red  or pink  in March and April.

Mahonia aquifolium ‘Compacta’Oregon Grape Evergreen shrubs with spiky leaves grow to several feet tall. Yellow flowers in February and March with good scent. It also produces black edible berries.

Hammemelis intermedia the witch hazel flowers before the leaves in yellows or oranges clustered down the twigs

Azalea are avaliable in many varieties and colours. The Knapp hill hybrids are deciduous and the flowers arrive with the leaves. They are strong colours of yellow, orange and pink. Azalea occidentale is a fragrant pink but flowers a bit later in May. The japanese hybrids are wonderful when grown together.

Berberis gladwy. ‘William Penn’ grows six foot high and wide and is evergreen. There are bright yellow flowers with a later flowering form in a strong orange. Thorns can be a problem but it makes an impenetrable thicket.  Berberis thunbergii is  a smaller deciduous variety.

Chaenomeles japonica Japanese Flowering Quince  upto 5 feet high and wide with plain deciduous leaves. The flowers are large pink, red or white and the shrub produces quince fruit that can be made into jelly.

Viburnum Gwenllian is evergreen and covered in buds or flowers for many winter and spring months. The buds are a pale pink and the flowers cluster in white and cream

Pieris japonica is evergreen with white or pink flowers in tumbling clusters of bell shapes. The new leaves are a strong red and one of my main reasons for growing these shrubs

Lilac may really be classified as a tree but it seems to fit this list.Lilacs have a strong scent that carries quite a distance. Unfortunately, Lilacs bloom for only a very brief couple weeks in the spring but have varieties of white, pale and deep lilac that can be plated together to prolong the flowering season.

Do not forget the evergreen shrubs I like Osmanthus