Adding Color to Your Winter Garden

November 21, 2022

Cleaning out the garden come fall is often a disheartening time for many. After pulling out the flowering annual plants, bright green herbaceous vegetation, and garden veggies, your yard can seem stark and colorless. But winter doesn’t need to be dismal and gray! The cooler months are the perfect time to enjoy subtle colors and plants that are upstaged by others during the summer.

There are plenty of ways to add color to your garden during the winter. You can choose plants or shrubs with colored foliage or stems or opt for ones that produce beautiful berries and flowers.

Plants that Add Color and Interest to a Winter Landscape

Evergreens

Evergreen plants that keep their foliage year-round bring beautiful shades of green, yellows, blues and even reds to your garden, regardless of the season. Their color is even more striking in the winter when set against snowy backdrops.

Deep greens and bright reds pop in the muted winter landscape, and golden hues bring a brightness to the drab winter days, reminiscent of summer sunshine.

• Rhododendrons, ReBloom® azaleas, and Encore® azaleas are exquisite flowering evergreen plants. They bring green vegetation often tinged with red-purple to the garden in winter, and their iconic blooms during spring, summer, and fall depending on the variety.
• Boxwood (Buxus spp.), privet (Ligustrum spp.), and euonymus are popular evergreen shrubs that offer a wide range of leaf sizes, plant sizes, shapes, colors, and textures. They are also low-maintenance and great for creating windbreaks.
• Junipers (Juniperus spp.), spruce (Picea spp.), cypress (Chamaecyparis spp.), pine (Pinus spp.), yew (Taxus spp.), arborvitae and red cedar (Thuja spp.) are also excellent options when wanting a traditional evergreen plant. These plants are available in many sizes, colors, and textures to meet your landscaping needs.

Colorful Branches or Attractive Bark

Deciduous trees and shrubs lose their leaves as temperatures drop in the fall, but some species still maintain allure with intriguing bark or branches. They often bring unexpected bursts of color to an otherwise drab landscape.

• Cornus alba (red twig dogwood) and Cornus sanguinea (common dogwood) are deciduous shrubs but they provide spectacular winter interest with their fiery red branches. Cornus species also show off delicate little white blooms in the spring.
• Paperbark maple (Acer griseum) grows in USDA zones 4 to 8, lending interest to the winter landscape as its papery thin bark peels back in sheets to reveal new bark in a soft shade of warm cinnamon brown.

Clusters of Winter Flowers

We typically relate flowers to warm weather and sunshine, but there are some shrubs that bloom well before other plants come back to life in the spring.

• Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) pulls double duty in terms of winter interest with its strappy yellow or orange flowers in late winter and striking golden foliage.
• Winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) may open its cheery yellow blossoms as early as January, if the weather is conducive.
• Star magnolia (Magnolia stellata) blooms from late February to April, opening showy clouds of pale blush to white flowers before its leaves open for the season.

Brightly Colored Berries

Berries not only add color to the garden, but they also act as a food source for birds and small animals that overwinter in your area.

• Hollies (Ilex spp.) bring an eye-catching display of glossy green evergreen leaves often punctuated with creamy yellowish variegation and bright red or gold berries depending upon the species.
• Bearberry cotoneaster (Cotoneaster dammeri) is another leafy evergreen you can count on for a dazzling show of berries, even in frigid winter climates.
• Nandina (Nandina domestica) shows off beautifully colored berries in milder climates (USDA 6 - 10 or 11) while maintaining their evergreen foliage. Burgundy Wine displays vibrant red and green foliage with white berries; Harbor Dwarf turns bronzy-red in fall with bright red berries.

Color-Changing Ornamental Grasses

Grasses like Hameln Dwarf Fountain and Overdam Feather Reed turn to desirable shades of golds, browns, and reds in the fall while their remaining seed heads offer movement to many landscape applications. They are perfect for adding visual appeal to the winter landscape.

Can I Plant Winter Color This Late In the Season?

Whether or not you can plant right now is a valid question, and the answer is, maybe.

Planting this time of year depends upon the recommended hardiness zone of the plant and your climate. Warmer climates have the luxury of planting long into the year, if not year-round, but those in colder climates may have missed their planting window.

Shipping also plays a factor in if you can plant because it directly relates to the viability of plants you purchase. You may live in a climate suitable for planting now, but if buying plants online, they may need to travel through frigid climates to reach their destination. These cold conditions can be damaging to plants and some nurseries may not ship to your growing zone until spring.

Let Us at Providence Nursery Help!

Our mission as Providence Nursery is to enrich the world through the cultivation of beautiful plants. Our farm is situated in the prime Willamette Valley—one of the best growing regions in the country—allowing us to grow the healthiest and happiest plants that you’ll find anywhere.

If you’re interested in ordering nursery plants from our team, we’d love to help you make your winter landscaping and gardening dreams a reality. We grow a variety of plants that deliver the added benefit of providing winter color. Explore our available plants for sale, and contact us to get started!

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