Winter's cold, dark and grey days are always around the corner! With the arrival of winter, our gardens start becoming cold, lifeless and dull. Why wait until spring to see your gardens blooming with flowers?
Our winter shrubs bloom brightly during Australia’s coldest days. Plant these beauties around your garden, and it’ll feel like summer never left.
We’ve listed our five favourites below, but if you’d like a hand picking the perfect colourful, fragrant winter shrubs for your garden, All Green Nursery’s friendly team are always happy to jump on a call!
Without further ado: 5 flowering shrubs for winter gardens
1. Banksia
Banksia flowers bloom late, lasting from the cooler final weeks of summer through winter. But they’ve another benefit: these 3m-tall beauties produce large amounts of nectar, making them a favourite of garden-friendly pollinating insects.
There are 173 species of banksia, each requiring specific soil conditions to thrive. The flower heads are typically yellow to red. We’ll help you pick and source the ideal varietal for your garden’s aesthetic.
2. Silky eremophila
Silky eremophila, also called emu bush, is a beautiful perennial shrub with purple tubular flowers and silver foliage. Its flowering time is in spring, summer, and winter. Silky eremophila is a mound-shaped shrub that requires good native fertiliser to grow. It grows from 0.8m to 2m and needs loamy soil, sandy loam soil, clay loam soil, and potting mix. We recommend pruning this shrub to make it grow back thicker and stronger.
3. Grevillea
Grevillea is a lovely winter-flowering shrub that flowers in spring and winter and bears pink, red, and cream flowers. It is an excellent choice for a medium-sized pot and rockery soil bed. This small shrub covers the ground and grows between 0.3 and 0.4 metres. It requires less maintenance and is very effective in controlling soil erosion.
4. Hibiscus
Hibiscus are delicate-looking flowers but are indeed very tough. There are two varieties of hibiscus: evergreen and deciduous. The deciduous varieties of hibiscus can be grown in cool-temperate and frosty climates. The showy flowering shrub can be planted at any time of the year. However, it's best to plant the deciduous varieties of the shrub during the autumn so that they establish their roots before winter starts. These showy blooms will add a ray of sunshine to your garden during the winter.
5. Azalea
Are you looking for a great punch of colour during cold and dark winters? If so, you can't go past this beautiful winter shrub. We recommend planting these hot pink stunners in autumn or early spring to prepare them for winter bloom. They’ll require regular watering and an acidic soil with a pH of 5.5-6. However, they won’t require any special care during winter.
