Not too many plants blossom in the middle of summer. But the bottle brush buckeye is reliable shade tolerating plant. Not only that but once established it manages with minimal watering. If you have enough room this is a great plant. Our gardens have two clusters of this shrub and it looks wonderful.
This ia an aptly named plant, it does look like a bottle brush and even better is grows in the shade and flowers in midsummer. Actually this shrub looks good enough that the flowering is almost a bonus.
pring flowering peters out through June until summer flowering plants sort of take over, but it isn't quite the same. Lots of prairie natives flower in the summer, but not nearly as many shrubs or bushes flower in the summer. Here's an exception, and if you don't have one, you need to rethink your garden. Right now in mid-July, our bottle brush buckeyes (Aesculus parviflora) look great, and they grow OK on edges and in light shade. This shrub has probably the showiest floral display of any shrub that can grow on a light shade border. They can get a bit taller than many people would like, and they do spread a little after awhile but no so much it is considered a problem. These long (over a foot in length) inflorescences just cover the plants and contrast nicely with dark green foliage. Japanese beetles have been a problem before, but hardly any beetles this season. Our plants were seedlings and it was a very slow start, so buying bigger plants, paying someone else to grow them, is a good idea. The plant is a native to SE USA, but they seem quite cold hardy. 
