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Beautiful Plants That Flower During a SoCal Winter
Written by Kelsey W.
One of the perks of living in Southern California is that the environment remains green for much of the year, and the “winter” isn’t always so cold and snowy unless you’re living in one of the mountain communities where flurries and evergreens are expected.
Despite the reasonable year-round weather, the plants around Southern California do go into a hibernation of sorts when the daylight starts receding, and the temperatures start requiring us to wear sweaters.
One of the wonderful things about the plant world is that some perennials are actually quite keen to bloom in the winter and will beautify your home or garden with flowers, whether it’s a chilly day outside or the middle of December.
Let’s take a look at some of the colorful floral options you have for making things beautiful this winter at your SoCal home, apartment, or condo.
Bring a Christmas Rose Home to Southern California
Sometimes referred to as Lenten roses and known scientifically as hellebores, Christmas roses are native to the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, which are the two Mediterranean islands that sit off the western coast of Italy. They’ll bloom for you right in the middle of the winter when you care for them correctly.
Since Southern California also has what many might consider a Mediterranean climate, these plants tend to fare very well when they’re brought to the Southland. If you’re in one of the hotter areas of Southern California, you might choose the “Helleborus orientalis” variety, which is used to higher temperatures.
In general, your hellebores do best when they get a little shade during the day, so try to avoid putting them on a south-facing wall. They also enjoy a balance of moist soil that also drains well. So, basically, you want to water them regularly but ensure they don’t remain waterlogged.
Now, technically, hellebores aren’t closely related to roses, even though their nickname would make you think they are. But in the general realm of roses, you can actually get many types of roses to bloom throughout the year in Southern California, even if you don’t give them a lot of attention.
If you take the dead blooms off the plant regularly when they start blooming, you can encourage them to bloom for an extraordinary number of months. Some rose types do require that you up your planting game a bit, though, so just make sure you do your homework before bringing a rose to your home.
The Rose of Winter is Another December Bloomer
Known by some as the Rose of Winter, the Camellia plant or “Camellia japonica” is an evergreen shrub that’s popular in the southern states. It is also a plant you can grow in Southern California when you have the right conditions.
They don’t like hot afternoon sun, so you’ll normally want to place them on an east-facing wall or a north-facing wall. You can even plant them in a shady area under a tree, but bear in mind some varieties of Camellias can grow several feet tall, so you’ll want to prepare for that eventuality.
The cool thing about these plants is that they usually start blooming in December and continue blooming for several months, so it’s not just the start of winter when you get to enjoy their blooms.
Like the Christmas Rose, the Rose of Winter isn’t actually a rose plant; its nickname just comes from the way its flowers look. You may also come upon the related Camellia sasanqua, which has a slightly different shape as a shrub.
To keep your Camellias in a happy condition, make sure that their soil is never allowed to remain too water-logged. They do enjoy a healthy helping of water, but only when their soil drains well. You can fertilize them when you first plant them, and adding some additional fertilizer late in the spring can extend the number of blooms they give you throughout the year.
Bring Home Some Early Blooming Iris Bulbs
You may already know that the iris plant tends to bloom early in the season when it starts to get warm, but the dwarf iris or reticulated iris actually blooms even earlier, especially when planted in Southern California. You can often see them starting to bloom in the late winter, well before mid-March.
The iris is an excellent plant for late-winter blooms when you have plants that fade earlier in the season and want some early color. The trick to ensuring you get flowers every year is cutting back the flower stalks right after the flowers fade but leaving the leaves to wither away on their own.
Reticulated irises tend to spread on their own, too, so if you’re in it for the long haul, you can eventually fill an entire bed with a huge number of irises after growing them for several years. If you’re in an area of SoCal where it never freezes or where it never really dips that low in temperature, they’ll have an easy time spreading.
Note that you may get another round of blooms from your irises, which is why it’s helpful to leave the bulbs in the ground. You don’t really need to go to the trouble of taking your reticulated iris bulbs – or any other sort of iris bulbs – out of the ground each year. They’ll come back on their own, especially in Southern California.
As far as their watering and fertilizing needs go, irises usually fare well when you water them about once a week. They don’t like their soil to dry out too completely, but you should also try to make sure they don’t sit in a pool of water either.
Irises are pretty sturdy little plants, too, which means you can grow them in almost any soil, but for the most vibrant blooms and the happiest plants, they will appreciate a blood and bone meal fertilizer applied once they start their growing season. Otherwise, they’re an excellent low-maintenance flower for winter blooms.
Grow a Cute Basket of Pansies at Your Home
Pansies can actually grow all year in Southern California. The weather is so accommodating for these hardy plants that they just won’t know when to shut things down for the season and stop blooming. However, they’re also so intrepid that it’s not unusual to see a flower or two popping out of the snow – yes, the snow! – in the middle of the winter in a snowy region of the country.
You can plant your pansies any time of the year, but they’ll fare best if you put them in the ground or into a container at some point in the fall or late fall. Although pansies are technically annuals, you can usually get them to stick around for a few years in Southern California. They almost behave like perennials.
If you don’t have a yard and a space for a big flower bed full of pansies, they’re also excellent flowers for decorating the balcony of your condo or the patio of your apartment. They grow easily in hanging baskets, containers, and anywhere, with minimal need for fertilizer or specialized care.
A related flower you might not have heard of before that’s almost just like a pansy (they’re closely related) is the viola, and they’re another excellent option for cold-weather blooms. Not only will they give you beautiful flowers throughout the winter and spring, but they’ll even flower throughout the fall, too.
If you have some flowers in your yard that tend to fade as the summer wanes and fall arrives, violas are the ideal flowers to take their place. Marigolds, for example, love the summer, but they have a hard time lasting too long into the fall. You can plant some violas as their wintertime replacement and then return to planting your marigolds again in the late spring of next year.
Bring Your Garden to Life This Winter with Green Thumb Nursery
Don’t let the blooms fade from your balcony, patio, or yard. This year, get your winter garden looking beautiful with some plants that will bloom for you throughout the winter season. At Green Thumb Nursery, you’ll find all the information and expertise you need to create a beautiful home filled with gorgeous new plants.
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