- Areas in the landscape that have poor drainage may look like a bad spot to put any plants. Fortunately, a variety of colorful shrubs will thrive in those full sun, wet spots. Available in various textures and sizes, you can brighten up the area and show what you can do with those seemingly hopeless areas.
- Standing 2 to 6 feet tall, the mounds of dark-green, leathery foliage produce one central stem from each clump. At the tip, steeplebush blooms from July to September with 4- to 8-inch-long, pyramidal-shaped, dense clusters of rose-purple to pink flowers. They bloom from the top of the pyramid down, lasting one to two months from initial bloom. Steeplebush has yellow fall foliage and dies to the ground each winter, returning in the spring in U.S. Department of Agriculture hardiness zones 4 to 8. Give this shrub wet, sandy, acidic soil in full sun.
- Purpleosier willow starts as an upright, erect shrub in its youth with purple-red stems, then lives up to the willow in its name. It morphs into a 10-foot-tall by 10-foot-wide shrub with outward arching, olive-gray stems. The yellow-green to light-green catkins appear in late April to early May, but the foliage is the eye-catching part. Its foliage is dense, beginning blue-green and turning purple-black in the fall. This willow is a water-loving, sun-loving shrub, hardy in zones 4 to 7, that adapts to any type of soil and tolerates drought.
- Starting as a loose shrub, eventually forming dense thickets with age, summersweet clethra reaches up to 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide. Fragrant, light-pink to white clusters of flowers with the look of a bottlebrush bloom for about three weeks starting in late July. Hummingbirds and butterflies find them irresistible. The dark-green foliage turns to golden brown or yellow to yellow-green in the fall for two to four weeks. Tolerant of salt spray in the winter, summersweet enjoys lots of sun in wet, fertile, acidic soil in hardiness zones 4 to 9, but can experience problems -- even death -- in alkaline soil.
- Common winterberry shrubs are kin to holly, but lacking the green jagged holly leaves. Its leaves are purple-green most of the year before turning black when the first frost of the year comes. The 3- to 12-foot-tall shrub may have a crown measuring 8 to 12 feet in diameter. Tiny white, yellow or green flowers blooming from April to July aren't noticeable, but the brilliant red berries that follow grab your attention. They stay on the shrub feeding local wildlife through the winter. It does need at least one male plant for every 10 to 20 female plants in order to bear fruit each year. Give winterberry an acidic, wet, sandy, clay, loamy soil in hardiness zones 3 to 9 and water it regularly.