The Best Winter Plants For A Colourful Festive Season
Winter does not have to be a drab time for your garden. Although most of the trees are bare and many plants have entered dormancy, there are still plenty of opportunities to add colour to the landscape.
The right winter plants can add vibrancy and interest to your garden throughout the frosty, overcast days. If you are looking to prolong the visual appeal of your outdoor space and ensure your garden design shines throughout the winter, you have come to the right place.
As an award-winning landscaping company, Landesigns understands what it takes to create gardens that thrive all year-round. Relying on our professional skills and experience, we are sharing the best winter plants to add colour, style and structure to your garden this season.
In this post, you will learn how you can brighten up the festive period through planting.
Why Winter Plants Matter: Top Benefits Of Seasonal Planting In Garden Design
Seasonal planting is essential to ensuring your garden design thrives throughout the year. Winter is usually a simpler season for outdoor spaces, as many plants enter a dormancy. Once the leaves have fallen and flowers have died off, your garden may be looking drab, but it doesn’t have to stay this way.
Incorporating winter plants is one of the best things you can do for your garden design, because it offers benefits such as:
- Enhanced Aesthetics: Incorporating winter plants will add colour to your garden this season, helping to lift mood, add visual interest, and prevent the garden from looking barren. Planting can offer a range of wellbeing benefits, as we explore in this post Green Therapy: The Unexpected Health Benefits of Outdoor Spaces
- Maintain Structure: Many winter plants have strong architectural forms, which is ideal for your garden design and helps maintain the visual balance of your outdoor space.
- Wildlife Support: Many winter plants, such as winter flowers, berries and seed heads, can support wildlife when other food sources are scarce, ensuring your garden remains a supportive environment for biodiversity.
To help you determine whether planting is the right solution for your outdoor space, you need to understand the advantages of soft landscaping. To learn more about the benefits of planting and how soft landscaping impacts garden design, see our post Don’t Forget the Plants: Why Soft Landscaping Matters in Garden Design
Top Winter Plants For Colour And Structure This Season
To experience these benefits of seasonal planting, you need to incorporate a variety of winter plants into your garden design, such as:
Winter Shrubs For Colour, Texture & Structure
Shrubs are some of the best winter plants and a staple of your seasonal garden design because they can offer interesting texture, maintain structure and offer unexpected colour when you need it most. Although deciduous shrubs lose their leaves in the winter, there are other winter plants to rely on for engaging landscaping this season, such as:
- Mahonia (Mahonia × media ‘Winter Sun’): This evergreen shrub produces fragrant yellow flowers that bloom in winter, offering prolonged visual appeal and engaging garden design throughout the year.
- Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’: These winter plants produce pink flowers during the winter, which offer a striking contrast to their bare stems. They can be used as a feature shrub or mixed into borders for enhanced appeal. These are highly scented winter plants for layered appeal in your garden this season.
- Witch Hazel: This is a striking winter plant that has spidery flowers in shades of orange, yellow or red which bloom mid to late winter. They are a great way to design structured winter displays and have a soothing aroma which will pass through your garden with the cool winter breeze.
- Daphne (specifically Daphne odora or Daphne bholua): These winter plants are ideal for borders, entrances and walkways in your garden due to their fragrant flowers. These flowers bloom in winter or very early spring, making them a lasting staple in your garden design throughout the seasons.
- Skimmia japonica: With their evergreen leaves and late-blooming flowers, these winter plants can be used across your garden for ongoing visual appeal. Once the flowers have bloomed, these shrubs produce winter berries for additional seasonal colour and can thrive in shaded areas, making them suitable for the grey, dark season.
Perennials And Bulbs
With late-blooming flowers and spring planting, winter can be a colourful season in your garden. You can use this time to get ahead on the next gardening season and ensure your borders remain full of colour by incorporating winter plants such as:
- Hellebores (Christmas Rose): A staple in winter gardens, these festive winter plants bloom from December onwards, offering white or pink petals along with their evergreen leaves. This is a hardy, elegant winter plant that can be used to adorn mixed planting borders or prolong visual appeal in traditional, cottage-style gardens.
- Cyclamen: These winter plants produce flowers in late winter or early spring, based on the species and planting conditions. Available in shades of pink, white or purple, these winter plants are ideal for ground cover or container displays.
- Winter Heath (Erica carnea): These winter plants produce bell-shaped flowers late in the season, prolonging colour and interest in your garden. They continue to bloom and offer vibrancy long after many other plants have died off or entered their dormancy period, making them a great option for flower beds, containers and planters.
- Snowdrops: These iconic winter plants bloom incredibly early. The delicate flower heads are hardy and reliable, even in the harsh winter conditions and can be the perfect adornment for traditional, cottage or woodland style gardens.
Climbing Winter Plants
To add vertical interest to your garden or design a unique display, consider winter climbers such as:
- Winter Jasmine: The bright yellow flowers of these winter plants bloom in the colder seasons, offering a stunning contrast against the bare stems. They can be trained to climb walls, arches or pergolas to add vertical interest and vibrancy to your garden this season.
- Winter-flowering Clematis (such as Clematis cirrhosa): These winter plants produce creamy-white flowers throughout the season and can offer height to your planting displays. Pair with evergreen shrubs or foliage to frame your garden and add lasting structure to the design.
What Are The Best Winter Plants For My Garden Design? Factors To Consider
With some creativity, it is possible to create a winter garden that is just as vibrant and attractive as any other season. As we have explored, numerous winter plants can add colour, interest and structure to your planters, flower beds and borders.
However, not all winter plants are made equal, and some of these options may not always provide what you desire in your winter garden design. To help you find the best options for your garden design, landscape conditions, and overall desires, consider these factors:
- Plant Hardiness: It is essential that all winter plants are hardy to ensure they survive the harsh winter conditions. This can be determined by checking the blooming cycles of plants and consulting with professional landscape gardeners like our team. Hardy winter plants include bulbs, evergreen shrubs, and winter-blooming species, which thrive in cold temperatures.
- Placement: To ensure your winter plants thrive throughout the season, you need to understand your garden’s sun and shade patterns and which plants will work best in these spaces. For example, consider what plants work best in shade, partial shade, or sunnier spots to ensure they can thrive this winter and maintain a key focal point in your garden.
- Garden Soil Type and Drainage: Many winter plants need well-drained or humus-rich soil to thrive throughout the cold temperatures. Your garden will need to be assessed to determine the unique soil conditions you are working with, as well as the drainage properties. Additional installations and support can be provided by professional landscapers to enhance these conditions and make your garden more suitable for planting. To help you find the best landscaping company for your needs, see our post Landscaping Companies Near Me: How to Find the Best Local Experts
- Maintenance: Finding the best winter plants means not only considering how they look at the peak of their cycle, but also what is needed to maintain these conditions. How much work you are willing to do in your garden needs to be considered ahead of seasonal planting, because it determines what will work best for you. If you are looking to design a low-maintenance landscape, see our post Low-Maintenance Gardens: Attractive Landscapes Without The Effort
Conclusion
Winter plants are a great way to create an engaging, attractive, and healthy landscape this season. By incorporating perennials, evergreen shrubs, and winter-blooming flowers, you can maintain the visual appeal of your garden design throughout the seasons and enjoy a vibrant festive season.
For additional support and design inspiration, consider working with a professional landscaping company like Landesigns. We offer expert landscaping all year round and can help you achieve your dream outdoor space, no matter the season.
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To learn more about our services or to request a quote, please contact the team today.
FAQs
When is the best time to plant a vibrant winter garden?
Planting should ideally take place during the autumn, from September to November, as the soil is still workable at this time. Avoid planting during frost and extremely cold temperatures, as plant roots need time to establish.
How do I protect winter-flowering plants from frost?
To protect your winter plants from frost, rely on mulch, which should be layered around the base of the plant. You also need to ensure good soil drainage to prevent the plants from freezing while maintaining hydration. Finally, avoid planting in cold, exposed areas such as windy spots in the garden.
Do winter plants require a lot of maintenance?
Not necessarily, as many winter plants are low-maintenance once established due to how hardy they are. However, many shrubs and flowers may benefit from pruning after flowering and a feed in spring.