How to Choose Flowers to Grow in Winter

Do you enjoy a beautiful garden? Do you love gardening and the beauty of flowers but just give up on seeing another flower once winter comes along? There are a few flowers you can consider to plant for blooming in winter. Or you can simply choose to grow them indoors. You can decide to maintain a green house and bring cut flowers indoors, or you can grow them inside your home.

Some flowers can actually maintain cold weather outdoors quite well in winter. Some of these are acacia, azalea, heather, hellebores, camellias, Red Hot Pokers, honeysuckle, and Bird of Paradise. Viburnum shows off delicate blooms and also gives off a lovely fragrance. It is still best to have these sheltered as close to the side of the home as possible rather than out in the open. Bulbs such as tulips, daffodils and iris sometimes bloom in the dead of winter if they are sheltered well. They can be planted in the open if your location does not have extreme weather in winter. That famous winter flower, the Poinsettia, can be grown outdoors in winter if it is sheltered but it's normally recommended to grow it indoors, preferably in a greenhouse.

There are some very showy plants whose main season to bloom is in winter. Some of the hardiest bloomers are cineraria, cyclamen, Iceland poppies, and allysum.

Flowering evergreens can be an excellent choice if you want a gorgeous winter garden. For planting unsheltered out in the open, you may want to choose a blooming evergreen such as a Chinese juniper, winter heath or sweetbox. These three plants are tough but also feature lovely flowers. They have a pleasant fragrance that can surprise you in winter!

A fully heated greenhouse of course is preferable for growing flowers you can cut and bring inside in winter. But how many of us can afford this luxury? Did you know there are alternatives to a full greenhouse?

There are various small structures called hoophouses you can build or buy in which you can produce flowering plants. You do not need to invest in a heating system for a hoophouse, but it's best to have good light. There is an excellent articlehere explaining how to build an inexpensive hoophouse.

So you can see that a dedicated gardener can have a blooming garden all year round, with some good planning and a little imagination!