My sister lives in Delaware County, PA, which is borders the PA/MD border and when she first moved into her house, we discovered this, which we had no idea what it was until the nice folks on the "Name that Plant" forum ID'd it (here it was this past spring)... ;-):

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For reference - the fence is 6ft high.

The eldely neighbors who are still around and knew the previous owner (all were original owners from the '50s) had admired this, which has been in the ground for 40 years or so. None of them knew what it was as I discovered when meeting many of them at a barbecue my sister had for the neighbors this past year and I told them. :-p

The closest I could find to match the variety was the Ice Angels series - "Ice Follies" (which is supposedly a cross between C. williamsii and C. oleifera). It blooms during C. japonica time in spring, and has a C. japonica-type full flower that drops off intact. The blooms seem to hang around for almost a month (probably because this one is so big and seems to set so many flowers every year, there's a longer period of bloom across the whole thing). It seems to start blooming around April and is pretty much done by mid-end May, depending on the temperatures. It did get some winter burn the past couple winters but so far hasn't failed to bloom since my sister has lived there (when she moved in, the owner had died some time ago and his grandson sold the house - the garden had gone into disrepair as well and my sister and her DH spent alot of time and $$ re-doing the yard and fencing it in and rearranging all the mature shrubs except that large camellia and a butterfly bush that was left in place).

I would say, go for it with a cold hardy one and unless you know you really get cold where you are, don't shy away from the spring-bloomers (as I noticed many dissuade people from them in marginal areas but some of them seem to be pretty hardy when mature as obviously the above indicates). Baby it for the first years of its life, putting it in a protected location out of the winter winds (the above one had been planted facing south on the western side of the yard, but not far from the neighbor's garage (about 8ft out from it). The yard had become a shade garden due to the various exotic plantings and thanks to 2 massive 30ft holly trees that my sister finally had taken down. But it can take the sun if given plenty of water and is heavily mulched as this one is.