The Best New Trees and Shrubs of 2022

February 1st, 2022

   Five hydrangeas with new twists, a compact new native Virginia sweetspire, and a “baby brother” to the popular ‘Green Giant’ arborvitae are among the best new trees and shrubs hitting the market for the 2022 growing season.

   Growers, local garden centers, and other plant experts picked the following dozen woody plants for the four-part, best-new-plants series I compile each year.

   Today’s best new trees and shrubs of 2022 is the final installment of this year’s series.

   Part one on best new edibles of 2022 appeared on Jan. 11, part two on best new annual flowers of 2022 appeared on Jan. 18, and part three on best new perennial flowers of 2022 posted last Tuesday, Jan. 25.

   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 Let’s Dance Can Do!

   Of all the many new hydrangeas introduced in the last few years, Proven Winners’ Natalie Carmolli says this one really stands out for its gobs of baseball-sized flowers that keep coming and coming – right to the end of the season.

   “It’s a reblooming machine,” she says. “We knew this plant was special when we released it, but it keeps surprising us with its outstanding ability to rebloom.”

   Carmolli says Can Do’s “secret” is that it sets flower buds along the entire length of each stem, not just at the tips.

   Although Let’s Dance Can Do looks like a common big-leaf hydrangea with rounded blue-violet or pink flowers (depending on soil acidity), it’s actually a type of mountain hydrangea. Mountain hydrangeas have winter-hardier flower buds than most big-leaf types, meaning less chance that winter will kill flower buds (a key answer to the question, “Why didn’t my hydrangeas flower?”)

   Let’s Dance Can Do plants grow three to four feet tall and almost as wide, its leaves turn a purplish shade in fall, and an ideal site is one with morning sun and afternoon shade.

Oakleaf hydrangea ‘Snowcicle’

   Another new twist in hydrangeas is ‘Snowcicle,’ which is a native oakleaf type that’s unusual because it has double-flowering blooms.

   Angela Treadwell-Palmer, founder and co-owner of Alabama-based Plants Nouveau, picks this as her favorite new-for-2022 woody plant for its “incredibly long, double-flowered panicles and strong stems that set it apart from all of its predecessors.”

   ‘Snowcicle’s’ summer-long blooms are 12 to 14 inches long and age from creamy-white to a showy combination of rose-red, olive-green, and cream. The strong stems eliminate flopping, which is common on most oakleaf hydrangea varieties.

   ‘Snowcicle’ plants grow four to six feet tall in full sun to part shade and develop a fall foliage color that ranges from deep wine to burnt orange.

Hydrangea First Editions Little Hottie

   This third new hydrangea improves on the panicle type of hydrangea – ones that produce cone-shaped flowers from late summer into fall.

   The distinction here is First Editions Little Hottie grows only three to five feet tall and wide, making it one of the most compact panicle hydrangeas yet.

   Gretchen McNaughton, spokeswoman for Minnesota-based Bailey Nurseries, which is introducing Little Hottie, says the plant has “full flower heads that open green and turn sparkling white in midsummer. As evening temperatures drop in the fall, blooms turn antique shades of white and pink and stay in color through frost.”

   Little Hottie was good enough to win a 2021 Retailer’s Choice Award from The Garden Center Group as one of the year’s most innovative new plants with the potential to become a new best-seller.

   It grows in full sun to part shade.

Hydrangea Magical Ruby Snow

   Another compact new panicle-type hydrangea is the favorite new woody-plant introduction of Lower Paxton Twp. horticulturist David Wilson, marketing director for Overdevest Nurseries’ Garden Splendor line of plants.

   Wilson likes Ruby Snow for its “tight, compact, bushy habit and strong, sturdy non-flopping stems that carry bright white panicles in mid-summer. As temperatures cool, the cone-shaped panicles take on pink tones and eventually turn colorful, ruby shades that start from the base upwards. The tips remain white to look a bit like snow cones.”

   The variety comes from retired Delaware Valley College horticulture professor Frederick Ray, who previously introduced the award-winning ‘Haas Halo’ variety of native smooth hydrangea.

Magical Ruby Snow also was good enough to earn a slot on the industry’s Handpicked For You list.

   Ruby Snow plants grow three to four feet tall and four to five feet wide in sun or part shade.

Hydrangea Early Evolution

   If you just can’t get enough hydrangeas (and breeders seem to be betting that’s the case), yet another new hydrangea is Early Evolution, which ups the bloom time for panicle hydrangeas and in a very small package.

   Maria Zampini, president of the Ohio-based UpShoot plant introduction company, picks Early Evolution as her favorite new woody plant of 2022, primarily because the first flower buds appear in late May to early June. That’s weeks earlier than most panicle-type hydrangeas.

   Zampini says that the flowers start lime-white, change to pure white, then change to salmon-pink in summer before ending the season in dark pink by September.

   Early Evolution is unusually small, too, at under three feet tall and wide.

   “This variety is compact and is not like any other paniculata I have seen,” Zampini says.

   It grows in full sun to part shade.

Japanese hydrangea vine Flirty Girl

   This one (botanically Schizophragma hydrangeoides) isn’t a true hydrangea but an under-used, large, cold-hardy woody vine with flowers that look like a lacecap hydrangea.

   Chris Ruger, a grower at the wholesale Quality Greenhouses near Dillsburg, picks Flirty Girl as  his favorite new woody plant for its colorful foliage and extra-early bloom time.

   “Finally, a (Japanese) hydrangea vine that is quick to establish and bloom,” says Ruger. “New foliage emerges purple and matures to dark green. The creamy-white flowers bloom all summer.”

   Proven Winners, which is introducing Flirty Girl, says Japanese hydrangea vines are best used in woodland gardens or grown up north-facing walls.

   Flirty Girl plants can get big – 50 to 60 feet in time. And they have rootlets that cling to surfaces, which helps Japanese hydrangea vines climb on their own with tying or training (but leaves behind sucked-on roots if you ever decide to remove them).

   Plants grow and flower in most any light from full sun to full shade.

Virginia sweetspire Fizzy Mizzy

   Robert Kadas, owner of the Highland Gardens garden center in Lower Allen Twp., picks this compact version of our native Virginia sweetspire as his favorite new shrub of 2022.

   Kadas is a fan in general of Virginia sweetspire’s white spring flowers and burgundy fall foliage but says Fizzy Mizzy brings several improvements.

   “It has more upright blooms that stand above the foliage compared to the somewhat drooping flowers of other varieties,” he says. “It’s also more compact than the others, creating a neat, tidy little shrub that’s two to three feet tall and wide. Throw in that it attracts pollinators with its fragrant flowers, performs well in sun or shade, tolerates a variety of soil conditions, and that it’s deer-resistant… what else could you ask for?”

   Quality Greenhouses’ Ruger also mentions Fizzy Mizzy as one his favorite two new woody plants of 2022.

   Sweetspires spread by suckering, which is good for colonizing and propagating new plants but annoying to some gardeners who don’t want any spread. The suckers are easy to dig and transplant, though.

Elderberry Lemony Lace

   Although this showy shrub with the heavily dissected, fern-like golden leaves isn’t brand new, it’s just now widely showing up in garden centers.

   One carrying Lemony Lace elderberry for the first time in 2022 is Ashcombe Farm and Greenhouses in Monroe Twp., where nursery manager Brandon Kuykendall pegs it as his favorite 2022 shrub.

   “This is a great plant for a pop of color,” Kuykendall says. “It has very fine chartreuse leaves all summer… great color from spring to fall.”

   Lemony Lace grows five to six feet tall and wide but can be kept smaller if it’s pruned hard at the end of winter. It grows in full sun to part shade and is deer-resistant.

   With little to no pruning, Lemony Lace also flowers lightly in white in early spring and sometimes develops red berry-sized fruits in fall, making it colorful in multiple ways all season long.

Arborvitae ‘Junior Giant’

   ‘Green Giant’ has become the go-to evergreen screening plant for a lot of gardeners lately because of its fast growth habit, its tendency to produce a single leader (instead of multiple trunks that splay apart in snow storms), and especially because it’s a type of western arborvitae that deer don’t like nearly as much as our native eastern arborvitae.

   ‘Junior Giant’ does all of the above but with a much shorter stature.

   Plants Nouveau’s Treadwell-Palmer calls it “’Green Giant’s’ baby brother.”

   “Instead of a 30- to 40-foot-tall specimen, ‘Junior Giant’ will mature at 15 to 20 feet, making it a much better fit for sites where space is limited,” she says.

   Plants are best spaced five feet apart in hedge settings. Allow six to eight feet widths in stand-alone cases.

   Arborvitae do best in full sun but do reasonably well in part shade.

Rose True Bloom True Sincerity

   Overdevest Nurseries’ Wilson also likes this latest low-care floribunda rose selection from famed rose-breeder Ping Lim.

   “We trialed this in our nurseries without any fungicidal sprays, and the glossy foliage displays exceptional disease resistance,” Wilson says. “But more importantly, the compact, bushy, rounded, three-by-three-foot mounds are covered in large multi-colored blooms of red, pink, and yellow that have a mild fragrance… It is my new favorite in the True Bloom series.”     

   True Sincerity grows best in full sun.

Korean spice viburnum Spice Island

   The Korean spice viburnum is one of the most fragrant shrubs, throwing out its spicy-vanilla scent across the yard when it blooms white in May.

   “The flowers appear after the foliage emerges, creating a backdrop to showcase the light-pink buds and snowball-like white flowers,” says Penn State Master Gardener coordinator Nancy Knauss, who lists the variety in a post on new plants she recommends for Pennsylvania gardens.

   Knauss adds that Spice Island also has showy burgundy-red fall foliage – a feature that’s often overlooked in Korean spice viburnums.

   Spice Island plants grow four to five feet tall and wide in sun or part shade.

Groundcover rose Blushing Drift

   And finally, the Drift series of low, compact, and disease-resistant “groundcover” roses has been a big hit in recent years for Chester County-based Star Roses and Plants. For 2022, the company is introducing a new color – a double-bloomer with pink petals and yellow centers called Blushing Drift.

   Leah Palmer, the company’s public relations manager, says the new variety blooms from spring to frost and is mildly scented along with its compact size and disease resistance.

   Blushing Drift grows about a foot-and-a-half tall with a three-foot spread, ideally in full sun.

Read George’s post on best new trees and shrubs of 2021