The Best New Trees and Shrubs of 2023

January 31st, 2023

   The world’s first cascading hydrangea, a lime-and-black-leafed weigela, and a really skinny arborvitae are among the most interesting new trees and shrubs hitting the market for the 2023 growing season.

   Growers, local garden centers, and other plant experts mentioned the following 14 choices for the Best New Trees and Shrubs installment of my annual four-part, best-new-plants series.

   In case you missed them, posts on the Best New Vegetables, Herbs, and Fruits of 2023, the Best New Annual Flowers of 2023, and the Best New Perennial Flowers of 2023 appeared here in the past three weeks.

   Some of the following new tree and shrub varieties are available online and in some plant catalogs. Most also will be available in local garden centers beginning in April.

   The details:

Hydrangea Fairytrail Bride

   Japanese plant breeder Ushio Sakazaki married three different species of hydrangeas to create an all-new type of hydrangea that Proven Winners is introducing to the U.S. in 2023 – one with a cascading habit and flowers that keep coming throughout the season.

   Fairytrail Bride is the “No. 1 plant on my hit list,” says Dauphin County Master Gardener Kevin Kelly. “It’s a break-through, a whole different class of hydrangea.”

   Kelly says the variety, which won the Best Plant Award at the 2018 Chelsea Flower Show when it debuted in Britain, “has flowers at every node. There are so many flowers that the weight of them pulls the branches down, which gives the plant its trailing habit.”

   Fairytrail Bride’s lacecap flowers open white in June, taking on a pink blush as they age.

   Proven Winners is billing the new introduction as the “world’s first cascading hydrangea” and says it’ll grow three to four feet tall and slightly wider, in full sun or part shade, and in pots or the ground.

Hydrangea Pop Star

   The biggest issue with common bigleaf hydrangeas is that cold winters often kill the flower buds, meaning the plants bloom poorly or not at all.

   Pop Star is a new variety coming to Bailey Nurseries’ Endless Summer line that’s exceptionally bud-hardy as well as being compact (three feet tall and wide). It’s also a rebloomer.

   “Pop Star is an amazing advancement in the crowded space of bigleaf hydrangeas,” says Bailey’s marketing and communications manager Ryan McEnaney, who rates the variety as his favorite new plant of 2023. “I’ve had this plant in my yard for three years, and it continues to keep its compact size and bloom like crazy, even in my Zone 4 landscape.” (That’s two zones colder than the Harrisburg area.)

   Pop Star also won the Retailer’s Choice award at the 2022 AmericanHort Cultivate industry show as the best new shrub with the potential to become a garden-center best-seller.

   Like all bigleaf hydrangeas, Pop Star does best in sites with morning sun and afternoon shade.

Hydrangea Seaside Serenade Glacier Bay and Fire Island

   A second new bigleaf hydrangea debuting in 2023 is another compact rebloomer called Glacier Bay that sports pure-white lacecap blooms with nicely contrasting black stems.

   “Glacier Bay doesn’t look like a traditional hydrangea,” says Monrovia Nurseries’ chief marketing officer Katie Tamony, who rates the variety as her favorite new shrub. “The dramatic black stems and lovely star-shaped white blooms make this an elegant specimen for more modern gardens.”

   Glacier Bay blooms in early summer and again in fall on plants that grow about three feet tall and wide.

   Newly retired Penn State Master Gardener coordinator Nancy Knauss likes another new Seaside Serenade entry called Fire Island.

   It’s a reblooming bigleaf/mophead-type but has flowers that are “white with a frilly, rosy-pink edge when they emerge, slowly maturing to deep pink with age,” as Knauss describes it.

   She adds that Fire Island’s foliage takes on an attractive maroon color in spring and fall.

   Ideal siting for both of these varieties is morning sun and afternoon shade.

Panicle hydrangea Puffer Fish

   Also new in hydrangeas is this summer-blooming panicle type that Proven Winners’ PR specialist Natalie Carmolli describes as a “larger, more puffed-up Bobo.”

   Bobo is a sleek variety that’s been one of the most popular, beautiful, and long-blooming dwarf panicle hydrangeas in recent years.

   Carmolli says Puffer Fish blooms open white, then turn lime green, then send up another round of white flowers later in the bloom cycle.

   “The fluffy blooms engulf the entire plant, nearly obscuring the foliage,” she says, adding that Puffer Fish also has “a tight, compact habit with stems strong enough to hold its large, fluffy blooms.”

   Plants grow three to five feet tall and wide, do well in both sun or part shade, and bloom from July into fall.

Panicle hydrangea Fire Light Tidbit

   The new-for-2023 hydrangea that I like best of any panicle hydrangea I’ve grown yet is Proven Winners’ Fire Light Tidbit.

   I planted this dwarf panicle type last summer and found it to be a super-heavy bloomer with big, conical flowers that turn from white to pink to a rusty shade as mid-summer hands off into fall. My plant was colorful for months.

   I also like Fire Light Tidbit’s habit – low, dense, and horizontal to a size of only about two feet tall and three feet wide.

   Fire Light Tidbit is drought-tough, bug- and disease-resistant, and will do anything from full sun to part shade. The only Achilles’ heel is that deer are fond of hydrangeas, which is true of most any bigleaf or panicle variety.

Panicle hydrangea WorryFree Love-a-Lot

   Before we leave the burgeoning field of outstanding new hydrangeas, Lower Paxton Twp. horticulturist David Wilson says the best panicle hydrangea he’s seen yet is WorryFree Love-a-Lot, a new entry debuting through the Hand Picked for You retail network.

   “In side-by-side observations in our trial beds, where we grow dozens of previously introduced cultivars and prospective new ones, Love-A-Lot stands out as the brightest, most colorful one,” says Wilson, who’s marketing director for Overdevest Nurseries.

   He adds that Love-a-Lot produces “gorgeous, big flower heads that are held on strong, sturdy, non-flopping stems that stand up erect and that are nearly as thick as your finger. The flowers start out white, pass through soft pink to brighter glowing pinks, then eventually to shades of deep pink verging on red shades.”

   Plants grow about five feet tall and in full sun to part shade.

Weigela ‘Vinho Verde’

   This variegated new compact weigela gets Ashcombe Farm and Greenhouses nursery manager Brandon Kuykendall’s vote as best new shrub of 2023.

   “I like weigela ‘Vinho Verde’ from Proven Winners for its striking foliage,” he says. “It has a unique lime-green leaf with black margins. The foliage is awesome.”

   Proven Winners says the leaf color sometimes “reverts” from that two-tone shade but the reversions are all black – a shade that some gardeners might even prefer.

   The May flowers of ‘Vinho Verde’ are reddish-pink.

   The plant’s growth habit is neater and more compact than most weigelas, topping out at three to five feet tall and wide. Weigelas do best in full sun to light shade.

Sterile barberries

   Now that Pennsylvania is banning Japanese barberries for being invasive, this popular and durable shrub will disappear from garden centers later this year – save for varieties that have been verified as sterile (i.e. no viable seeds).

   The state Department of Agriculture so far has exempted four varieties of barberries from the ban. All are in the WorryFree series developed at the University of Connecticut.

   While the burgundy-leafed Crimson Cutie (two by three-and-a-half feet in size) and chartreuse-leafed Lemon Glow (two-and-a-half by four feet) are already on the market, the other two are debuting this spring.

   They are Lemon Cutie, a gold-leafed variety that tops out at two-by-three feet, and Mr. Green Genes, a green-leafed variety that’s the biggest of the series at three by five feet.

   All four of these sterile barberries have thorns, are deer-resistant, and do best in full sun.

Parrotia Golden BellTower

   In new trees, Plants Nouveau co-owner Angela Treadwell-Palmer says her favorite 2023 introduction is parrotia Golden BellTower, a columnar, gold-leafed version of this species that’s sometimes called Persian ironwood.

   “Parrotias are easy trees to grow,” Treadwell-Palmer says. “They have no real pests or diseases, they’re drought tolerant, tolerant of many types of soils, and have great fall color.”

   She says Golden BellTower stays consistently deep gold in leaf color throughout the season and stays truly columnar with age.

   The variety’s peak look comes in fall when the foliage turns a brilliant blend of gold and apricot.

   Golden BellTower’s strong branching and tight growth habit also make this a tree that’s unlikely to lose limbs in winter snow and ice storms.

   Figure on a size of about 25 feet tall and 10 to 12 feet wide in 25 years – good for width-limited sites. Parrotias grow well in full sun to light shade.

Arborvitae Sting

   Bryan Benner, the head shrub grower at wholesale Quality Greenhouses near Dillsburg, likes this new needled evergreen for its extremely skinny habit.

   Sting is a version our native arborvitae that grows straight up like a green exclamation point, reaching 15 to 20 feet tall but only a foot to 18 inches wide. That’s even skinnier than ‘Degroot’s Spire’ and ‘American Pillar.’

   Sting is not only an ideal choice for tight spaces where height is needed, but it makes a “great architectural accent for gardens,” says Benner.

   It’s also a fast-grower that works both in full-sun and part-shade locations.

Rose Top Cream

   One of the best new roses hitting the market in 2023 is Top Cream, a heavy-blooming, hybrid-tea type in the Bloomables line that’s the favorite new rose of Heidi Mortensen, the rose portfolio manager for Star Roses and Plants in Chester County.

“The large, old-fashioned blooms of this special hybrid-tea rose are extremely fragrant with notes of earthy pear,” Mortensen says.

   She describes the bloom color as “creamy-white with an occasional light pink blush” and says that Top Cream has excellent disease resistance and makes an excellent cut rose.

   Plants are bushy and upright in habit, growing six feet tall and three feet wide, ideally in full sun.

Rose True Bloom True Excitement

   The latest entry in Altman Plants’ ground-breaking True Bloom series is True Excitement, a variety that Penn State Flower Trials Director Sinclair Adam rates as one of his two favorite new shrubs of 2023 (the other being a dwarf pink-blooming butterfly bush called Chrysalis Pink).

   True Bloom is a new class of rose bred by famed breeder Ping Lim – a blend of the easy-care performance of shrub roses and the classic beauty of hybrid teas. The series’ hallmarks are exceptional disease-resistance (no spraying needed), big flowers, and lots of them.

   Adam likes True Excitement’s “striking red and white bicolor flowers that make this a rich color for a border. The compact habit is quite impressive, too.”

   Plants top out at 16 inches tall by less than two feet wide.

   Adam says True Excitement showed “no real incidence” of disease despite no spraying in Penn State’s trials last summer.

   The variety is the seventh color in the True Bloom line. They all do best in full sun and bloom throughout the summer with a peak in June.

Read George’s post on the Best New Trees and Shrubs of 2022