The Best Plants For Winter Colour
Winter in the garden is often misunderstood. Many see it as a time of dormancy, where landscapes fade into grey and wait for the warmth of spring to return. But at Beautiful Spaces, we believe a winter garden can be just as captivating as a summer one.
In fact, many plants can provide winter colour and interest, even during the coldest months. With thoughtful design and planting, your outdoor space can remain a sanctuary of structure, fragrance, and vibrancy, even in the depths of December.
As a leading garden design company, Beautiful Spaces understands the value of a year-round garden and knows what works in Surrey landscapes at this time of the year. Here is our guide to the best plants for winter, focusing on winter plants that offer colour, texture, and seasonal elegance.
Whether you are looking to brighten a dark corner or create a stunning view from your kitchen window, introducing winter colour is the key to extending the enjoyment of your garden year-round.
Why Prioritise Winter Colour?
A well-designed garden should offer interest in every season. By planning for different seasons, you ensure continuous colour and enjoyment throughout the year. Winter planting isn’t just about filling gaps; it is about creating a landscape that feels alive.
By incorporating plants with bold stems, architectural foliage, and resilient blooms, you transform a stark outdoor space into a warm, inviting scene. It lifts the spirits on shorter days and provides vital structure when deciduous trees are bare.
The Best Plants For Winter Colour
To experience the benefits of a colourful garden this season, consider incorporating a range of plants for winter colour, such as:
Winter-Flowering Shrubs: Fragrance and Blooms When You Least Expect Them
These hardworking shrubs defy the cold, offering delicate flowers and often heady scents that drift through the crisp winter air, with their fragrance carried on the breeze to enhance your winter garden experience:
- Witch Hazel (Hamamelis): A true winter showstopper. Its spidery, yellow-to-orange flowers appear on bare branches, offering a spicy fragrance and a burst of sunshine on grey days. Flowering time may vary depending on local climate conditions.
- Mahonia: With its architectural, holly-like leaves and spikes of bright yellow flowers, Mahonia provides both structure and colour. It is also a fantastic source of nectar for winter-active pollinators, and its blooming period may shift depending on your region’s climate.
- Winter Jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum): Unlike its summer cousins, these climbing plants for winter colour produces cheerful yellow star-shaped flowers on bare green stems, perfect for brightening up fences or trailing over walls.
Evergreens: Lasting Foliage For Strong Structure
When many of your plants, flowers and perennials die back, evergreens can take centre stage. They provide the bones of your garden design, ensuring it never feels empty:
- Box (Buxus): ideal for clipping into formal shapes, such as balls, cones, or low hedges, to create clean lines and permanent structure. These shrubs can provide excellent garden screening, as we explore in our post How Do I Make My Garden More Private?
- Holly (Ilex): The quintessential winter plant. Its glossy, deep green leaves and bright berries catch the light beautifully.
- Sweet Box (Sarcococca): A compact evergreen that packs a punch. Its tiny white flowers might be subtle, but its powerful, sweet scent is unmistakable near a doorway or path.
Winter Perennials & Groundcovers: Winter Colours At All Angles
Don’t neglect the ground level this winter! Winter perennials are ideal for planting in beds and borders to maintain colour and interest at ground level. These plants for winter colour also add softness and visual interest to the base of trees and shrubs.
These plants are also ideal for a cottage garden, which is a popular garden design trend that we explore in our post How to Design a Cottage Garden That’s Timeless:
- Hellebores (Helleborus): Often called the Christmas Rose or Lenten Rose, these are indispensable. Their nodding heads in shades of white, pink, purple, and lime green look elegant, even dusted with frost.
- Heuchera: Grown for their stunning foliage rather than flowers, varieties range from deep plum and burgundy to amber and lime, adding rich warmth to borders.
- Elephant’s Ears (Bergenia): Their large, leathery leaves often turn shades of deep red or bronze in winter, providing excellent ground cover and bold texture.
Colourful Stems & Bark: Sculptural Beauty Against The Winter Sky
Tress and shrubs with colourful bark really shine once the leaves have fallen, making them some of the best plants for winter colour. They catch the low winter sun and create a dramatic contrast:
- Dogwood (Cornus): Famous for its vibrant stems in fire-engine red, burnt orange, or lime green. Plant them in groups for maximum impact.
- Silver Birch (Betula pendula): The peeling, snowy-white bark of a birch tree often displays a milky-cream or cream hue, adding to its ghostly and beautiful winter appeal, especially when underplanted with dark evergreens.
- Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum): This tree features peeling, copper-coloured bark that glows beautifully when backlit by the winter sun.
Winter Berries: Jewels For Your Garden & A Feast For Wildlife
Berries add tiny dots of vibrant colour in your winter garden that can last for months, while also supporting local birds like thrushes and blackbirds. These are unique plants for winter colour that can truly have an impact on your garden design this season:
- Cotoneaster: A versatile shrub laden with red or orange berries that persist well into winter.
- Pyracantha: Also known as Firethorn, this can be trained against a wall to create a spectacular vertical display of orange, red, or yellow berries.
Designing Plants for Winter Colour
Creating a successful winter garden requires a shift in perspective. Here are a few design principles to maximise the appeal of your plants for winter colour and create a garden that thrives throughout the season:
- Position for Visibility: Plant your most colourful winter specimens where they can be seen from inside your home, for example, a Witch Hazel placed near a kitchen window or a pot of Hellebores by the front door ensures you enjoy them daily without braving the cold.
- Chase the Light: The winter sun is low in the sky. Position plants with translucent bark or grasses where they will be backlit by the sun to make them glow.
- Create Contrast: Pair the dark, glossy leaves of evergreens with the pale, peeling bark of a Silver Birch, or the bright stems of Dogwood against a dark fence. Contrast creates drama.
- Use Layers: Ensure your planting scheme has height like trees, middle structure like shrubs or tall plants, and ground interest perennials to avoid a flat look. Plan for late winter interest as well, so your garden remains vibrant as the season transitions toward spring.
Working with a professional garden designer can help you make the most out of your space, no matter the season. To determine whether we are the right team for you, see our post How to Choose the Right Garden Designer in Surrey.
Simple Winter Maintenance To Make The Most Out Of Your Plants
While winter plants are generally hardy, a little care goes a long way. To ensure that your plants for winter colour continue to thrive and remain an attractive focal point in your garden, consider the following garden maintenance tips:
- Mulch: Apply a layer of mulch around the base of plants to retain moisture and protect roots from hard frosts.
- Prune: Keep Winter Jasmine and Dogwood stems vibrant by pruning them at the right time (usually late spring for Dogwoods to encourage new colourful growth for the next winter).
- Pots: If you have winter bedding in pots, ensure they don’t become waterlogged. Raise the pot feet off the ground to aid drainage.
For more winter garden maintenance tips and planting care advice, see our Year-Round Seasonal Gardening Calendar: Ensure Success In Every Season.
Conclusion
At Beautiful Spaces, we specialise in creating gardens that look exceptional 365 days a year. If your garden feels lacklustre this winter, we can help you introduce structure, colour, and elegance that lasts.
From complete garden makeovers to bespoke planting plans designed to bring winter interest to your Surrey home, our landscaping company is ready to realise your vision.
Contact Us Today
Ready to bring your garden to life? Contact us today to discuss a seasonal planting consultation or a complete garden design.
FAQs
What plants give the most colour in winter?
For sheer vibrancy, Dogwood (Cornus) stems in red and orange, combined with the bright yellow flowers of Mahonia or Winter Jasmine, offer the most intense colour.
Which winter plants are low-maintenance?
Evergreens like Skimmia and Holly require very little care once established. Hellebores are also incredibly robust perennials that return year after year with minimal fuss.
Can I plant winter interest shrubs in autumn or winter?
Yes, as long as the ground isn’t frozen or waterlogged. Autumn is actually an ideal time to plant, as the soil is still warm enough for roots to establish before the hardest frosts arrive.
