5 Winter-Friendly Plants for Your Home’s Garden

Mar 4, 2019

It’s normal to crave lush greenery and a rainbow of flowering plants during the spring and summer months, and even into the cooler fall season.  However, most homeowners who live in cold winter climates are fairly resigned to giving up the colors of nature when snow starts to fall.

This doesn’t have to be the case, though.  With targeted landscape design planning, you have the opportunity to incorporate plants that show well in every season and provide the color you want during the winter months.  Here are just a few winter-friendly plants that will ensure a good view of your garden all through the year.

Boxwood Hedge

This is a popular choice in any landscape design because of dense, stiff foliage that is easy to shape into topiaries.  Most boxwoods require full sunlight for growth, but there are varieties that maintain their greenery during winter.

You just need to make sure you get the right plants so they don’t change color in the fall – unless you want to add a bronze hue to your yard in winter, in which case you can opt for a Winter Gem boxwood.  You can add boxwoods as border plants, place them along retaining walls, or contain them to pots around your fire pit to serve as an attractive wind screen.

Blue Spruce

This blue-hued evergreen is among the most popular choice for Christmas trees and garlands because of its unique color, symmetrical growth pattern, and full appearance (thanks to needle retention).  While the needles are sharp, rather than soft, and they don’t smell as sweet as some pine varieties, this tree still makes a gorgeous addition to your landscape in summer and winter alike.

Japanese Yew

This hardy and versatile plant is the perfect addition to any garden that suffers long months of winter weather.  It is equally at home in containers, planter beds, and open yard space and it offers the benefits of being draught tolerant and resilient enough to survive even harsh winter weather conditions.

It also does well in settings with either direct or partial sunlight, making it among the most adaptable types of greenery to beautify your Rock Valley, Iowa yard year-round.  As a bonus, it can be trimmed and maintained as ground cover or left to grow as a tree, which can reach upwards of 50 feet.

Flowering Quince

Having some greenery to look at during the winter months is nice, but what if you want cold-weather blooms to add a pop of color to your garden?  While most plants won’t bud in the heart of winter, the flowering quince blooms late winter to early spring in a riot of red that will make your garden explode in color, especially when the shrub reaches mature growth of roughly eight feet wide.

Snowdrops

Technically, these early bloomers bud at the end of winter, but they’ll be the first to populate your garden when thawing starts, and because they’re at ground level, as opposed to the trees and shrubs on this list, they’ll add vertical variety and depth to your Sioux Center, Iowa yard when you’re ready to brave the warming temperatures with coffee on your patio or in your pavilion.