2021: Flowering Shrubs

The 2021 edition of The Prairie Garden focuses on flowering shrubs and the queen of flowering shrubs, roses. Always popular topics in the past, they are definitely worth revisiting!

The last time we focused on shrubs was in our 2009 edition, “Deciduous Shrubs” (still available in limited quantities). Since then, hundreds of exciting new flowering shrub cultivars have emerged, many of them well suited to prairie gardens. Our “Roses” edition of 2008 is now sold out, but readers keep asking us for information on that topic. And rightly so: since 2008, important new hardy roses such as the Canadian Artists and 49th Parallel series have come on the market. Plant developers in our region have played a major role in breeding, selecting, and trialling all kinds of hardy flowering shrubs for the prairie landscape, including roses. With Dr. Philip Ronald of Jeffries Nurseries as our guest editor, we take a fresh look at these useful and beautiful plants in our 2021 edition.

As always, The Prairie Garden aims to be a guide for gardeners of all skill levels in the short-season gardening zones of Canada and the US. You’ll find over thirty articles on the theme and another dozen or so on general gardening topics, all contributed by experienced gardeners and experts.

Guest editor Dr. Philip Ronald was raised in the Canadian prairies and educated in plant breeding and horticulture at the University of Manitoba and the University of Saskatchewan. He currently divides his time between teaching ornamental horticulture at the University of Manitoba, managing Riverbend Orchards, a 20-acre fruit farm, and providing support to the research and marketing programs at Jeffries Nurseries. He resides near Portage la Prairie with his wife Karen and their children.