Summer and spring aren’t the only times for blooms. Winter flowers around your home and garden offer a cheerful winter wakeup, a refresh to an otherwise dark, cold weather season. “Adding fresh foliage to your home provides a sensory escape with lines and textures, instantly lifting your spirits, stimulating creativity, and offering warmth,” explains Matilda Reuter Engle, designer and proprietor at Middleburg Hospitality, who oversees Glenstone Gardens and Red Fox Inn & Tavern. In other words, flowers could help chase away winter blues.
Ushering in winter flowers can also keep homeowners connected to their gardens. Some of these flowers can be kept potted or planted outside to bask in the winter sun. You don’t have to be living in tropical climes to make them bloom outside, nor do you need to always be tending your garden with these early winter flowers.
For those who let their gardens hibernate, you can still bring some of the winter landscape indoors through pieces from the garden. For example, you can pepper bouquets with pieces of flowering shrubs. “Winter is a season of clean simplicity, and by designing with grand branches and statement pieces sourced from your surroundings you can create a look that is rooted in authenticity,” Engle says. Read on for all the best winter flower tips to help you start your own winter gardens.
What winter garden flowers are easier to grow?
True, the selection of winter-flowering plants is larger in warmer climates, but there are plenty of winter blooms that are great for a wide range of hardy climate zones. Not to mention, your local garden stores and florists can help suggest annual flowers for temporary bouquets. “Modern horticultural practices have brought distinct species to the forefront, including amaryllis, a tall-stemmed bloom with a large trumpet shape that comes in various colors,” Engle says. This plant is typically treated as a houseplant in partial shade or fun sun, but since it’s a perennial bulb, like daffodils, that can stay in the ground, you can grow it outside if you live in USDA hardiness zones 8 through 10 and have frost-free, well-drained soil. Coming in cheerful red and white shades, the flower blooms every winter, making for a nice Christmas flower that can last through to late winter.
There are other flowering plants easily found in winter. Engle says to check out paperwhites for their fragrant white flowers that will bloom indoors and fill your home with a sweet scent. Outdoors, you can grow winter jasmine, a deciduous shrub or ground cover that produces delicate bright yellow flowers to mimic the sunlight during cooler winter months, she says. Looking like an evergreen shrub most of the year, they do well in zones 6 through 10 and prefer full sun to partial shade. Plant these in early spring.
Why have winter flower bouquets?
Do you have gardens in full shade year-round, no matter the season? Add pops of color via indoor flowers to cheer up a winter abode. “I love the warm hues of winter bouquets,” says Chantelle Hartman Malarkey, interior designer and brand ambassador. She opts for reds and deep purple blooms like a Christmas rose. “White is also crisp and festive and perfect for a winter white look,” she says. “When picking winter flowers, it’s always festive and on brand to go for moody colors and jewel tones.” Pair these together to fit the season and add warmth to a winter home. “Hellebore is beautiful and perfect for winter bouquets because of the color. Something about them just looks winter festive.” Or when in doubt, look to pansies, which bloom in the winter and love the cold weather.
Choose evergreen foliage
To decorate a winter bouquet, look to foliage that remains thriving throughout the season, Engle says. She suggests evergreens, Carolina blue cedars, or pinecones for a warm palette of deep greens, dusty blues, and earth-toned browns. Unlike deciduous trees, these do not shed their leaves each winter.
Pick the right vessel
Dress up your winter flower arrangements by using your fanciest vessels, like you would your spring flowers. “For a small coffee table arrangement, use your antique heirloom vases to dress it up in lieu of the full-bodied blooms you have in spring,” Engle says.
Light it up
To really augment a floral display, think about the vignettes close by. “Complement your flowers with colorful pillars or taper candles with a brass or silver candlestick holder,” Engle says. These add some unexpected notes of winter color. “For hallway entries, a branch arrangement paired with these bright candles is really all you need.” This display includes fragrant flowers like zinnia, roses, ranunculus, viburnum berr, and more of the best winter flowers.
Add a tablecloth
Warm-colored flowers require balance with the implied warmth of a tablecloth, like this one with a dusty English primrose color. “Bolder colors can be incorporated into your decor, opting for heavy velvet linens and ribbons and colorful candles to mimic your favorite blooms.”
Try moody tones and colors
Though elsewhere you might choose light and bright like baby pink daphne or bright buttercup, don’t be afraid to go moody in your winter color choices. Tara Fay of Tara Fay Events describes this bouquet as old-style glamour meets sophistication. “Dark and moody colors are balanced with the delicate pink roses and the silk ribbon.” For this bouquet, they used a delicate mixture of garden roses, trailing jasmine, ranunculus, anemone, and Chrysanthemum.
Pick a statement flower
Dahlia for the win. This display of flowers has winter-friendly ranunculus, hosta leaves, gomphrena, celosia, smilax vines, black Queen Anne’s lace, and late fall/winter bloomer (though the star of the bouquet) white Dahlia, resembling large snowdrops in part shade.
Pop in fruit
As winter rolls in, harvest time is over. But you can still retain the imagery of abundance with sugared fruit still lifes, Engle says. “They are another addition to winter decor that offers a feast of color and textures.” She suggests pomegranates, pears, and grapes. “Display them in ornate trays and bowls to complement your tableware and drinkware.”
Lean into the blue
Besides warm colors, you can also opt for winter whites and lovely blue flowers to remind guests of a snowbound winter landscape. This display has dahlias, dusty miller, astilbe, white anemones, viburnum berries, and Russian olive. Paired with an ornate chair, the blooms feel like they could be perennial flowers.
Go green
This bouquet has a bounty of colors. But it has lots of green too, to offset the white of winter. Along with the blue hydrangea and Amaranthus, there’s plum tree, Queen Anne’s lace, dusty miller, scabiosa, and porcelain berries. All are perfect for the winter months and were locally sourced by Engle.
Think height
Fay suggests adding height to winter flower bouquets whenever possible. Autumnal branches or leaf displays can be effective at adding height. “I love winter florals and decor; it’s such a great opportunity to layer colors and textures. Those colors and textures really make the room stand out especially when adding in heights of candles into displays,” she says.
Buy some berries
Add some red berries or witch hazel for a woodland look to your bouquets. These natural pieces are out in winter, but faux from the craft store is just as good and twice as safe as picking random berries from the woods.
Juxtapose when possible
Pair high and low for a lived-in feel. “The juxtaposition of your finest crystal vases with earthy branches is a truly beautiful sight,” Engle says, “reminiscent of the elegance of winter, like icicles dangling outside.”
