Winter has its own unique beauty, especially when you add plants that stand out in the colder months. These shrubs brighten winter with fragrant blooms, vibrant berries, colorful foliage, and striking bark. Hardy winter-flowering shrubs are an excellent investment. They return year after year to bring life to dark, gloomy days. Their blooms also provide a crucial food source for bees and other pollinators during winter.
Best Winter Flowering Shrubs
Even in the middle of winter, there are still a few resilient plants that continue to bloom, filling cold, dark days with color and fragrance.
Mahonia
Mahonia stands strong year-round with its bold, spiny foliage and vibrant yellow flowers that bloom mid-winter, filling the air with fragrance. By spring and summer, blackberry clusters appear, attracting birds. This hardy evergreen thrives in shade and prefers moist, well-drained soil.
Prune in spring to control its size, cutting back as needed and removing one in every three older stems to encourage fresh growth.
Winter Daphne
The stunning beauty and sweet fragrance of winter Daphne can snap you out of the doldrums. This rounded evergreen shrub, with variegated leaves, bursts into bloom from late winter to early spring. Its rosy pinkish-purple buds unfurl into delicate light pink or white star-shaped flowers.
Plant it near an entryway or patio to enjoy its scent and charm. It grows in partial shade with well-drained soil and can reach up to four feet tall.
Witch Hazel (Hamamelis)
Witch hazels add striking color and fragrance to winter gardens, making them ideal for large spaces. These deciduous shrubs bloom from mid-winter, covering bare branches with clusters of yellow, orange, or red flowers resembling curly candied peel strips. Their sweet perfume lingers best on still, crisp days. In autumn, their foliage glows in vibrant shades of orange and red.
They thrive in fertile, neutral, acidic soil with sun or partial shade. Pruning is rarely needed, but if necessary, trim in spring to remove dead or cross branches and cut away any suckers at the base.
Arrowwood
This large deciduous shrub lights up autumn with warm shades of orange and red before shedding its leaves. Its bare stems come alive all winter with clusters of small, pink, sweetly scented flowers.
Arrowwood, also called Viburnum × bodnantense, thrives in most soils and grows well in sun or partial shade. Prune mature plants in spring after flowering, cutting one in every five old stems to the ground to promote fresh growth.
Winter Honeysuckle
Unlike their climbing honeysuckle relatives, shrubby winter-blooming Lonicera species bring a different kind of charm. Choose from three varieties: Lonicera fragrantissima, Lonicera × purpusii, and Lonicera standishii. These all form medium-sized, rounded bushes with woody, twiggy stems. In winter, their bare branches burst into tiny white or cream blooms, filling the air with fragrance.
Plant them toward the back of a border, as they offer little ornamental interest outside their flowering season.
Wintersweet
This aptly named deciduous shrub bursts into bloom from mid to late winter. It covers its branches with clusters of creamy-yellow, nodding flowers with purple centers and an incredible fragrance. Train it along a sunny wall or plant it near a doorway to enjoy its scent with every breeze.
Grow it in full sun with fertile, well-drained soil. Pruning is minimal; remove any dead, damaged, or crossing branches in late spring.
Winter Jasmine
Winter jasmine keeps its green stems through winter, creating a stunning contrast against its bright yellow flowers, which bloom from November to late winter. It is tough and hardy and thrives in both sun and shade.
Train it up vertical supports, let it cascade down a bank, or spill from a raised bed. After flowering, trim back the shoots to encourage bushy growth.
Christmas Box
This modest evergreen shrub may go unnoticed until late winter when it fills the air with its sweet fragrance. Its small white flowers might be subtle, but their scent never fails to draw attention. Upright stems, covered in slender dark green leaves, give this bushy shrub a tidy, structured look.
Christmas box, also called Sarcococca, thrives in shade and, once established, even tolerates dry conditions. If needed, you can lightly trim it in spring to maintain its shape.
Paper Bush
Paperbush (Edgeworthia chrysantha) fills winter with the promise of spring, releasing a rich fragrance when little else blooms. This deciduous, multi-branched shrub sheds its leaves by mid-December, revealing its striking bark and tightly clustered flower buds. By late winter to early spring, its white and yellow blooms emerge in a stunning display. Popular varieties include ‘Snow Cream,’ ‘Gold Rush,’ and ‘John Bryant.’
It grows in partial shade with well-drained soil up to six feet tall.
Clematis Freckles
Clematis Freckles brightens winter with its evergreen foliage and nodding creamy-white flowers, heavily speckled with red inside. Train it over an arch or pergola to fully enjoy its delicate blooms from below.
Like all clematis, it thrives in a sunny spot while keeping its roots shaded. After flowering, cut it back to maintain its size and mulch in early spring for healthy growth.
