Cool-Weather Flowers to Plant This Fall

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The end of summer doesn’t have to be the end of a beautiful flower bed or garden. In the south, there are plenty of options for flowering plants and ornamentals that will keep your landscape fresh and colorful through the cold months.

PANSIES

Pansies are a hardy and dependable flower, available in a wide variety of colors, making them a popular choice for winter flower beds. They can withstand temperatures down to the single digits, which is luckily rare for the Carolinas. Planting in the fall should give you blooming flowers until late spring.

ORNAMENTAL VEGETABLES

Kale, cabbages, and swiss chard are durable vegetables that can add texture and a little color to your fall plantings.

Flowering kale and cabbages are a great cool-weather ornamental plant, because their colors are actually enhanced by the cold. They grow well in full sun or partial shade, but can take several months to reach full size.

Much faster to grow, swiss chard is a great ornamental vegetable since its height (around 24 inches) can easily fill out a sparse garden.

SNAPDRAGONS

If you’ve gotten bored with planting pansies year after year, snapdragons may be another colorful flower to consider. Like pansies, they come in many colors, so you are sure to find one that complements your other plantings. Snapdragons can bloom until the coldest part of the winter season, at which point they’ll rest until blooming again in the spring.

HONEYWORT

Honeywort can add a unique touch to your garden. Its shape is unusual and its blue color intensifies in the cold weather. Enjoy it while it lasts though, because honeywort dies as the weather gets hotter.

WINTER JASMINE

Have a trellis or archway that could use some draping flowers? Winter Jasmine might be a good choice. It can survive all year, but will only flower in the dead of winter for about 6-8 weeks. The bright yellow flowers are a great touch, while the green vines will continue to be a nice aesthetic feature the rest of the year.

GERANIUMS

The Geraniums you’ve had planted all summer don’t need to move inside just yet! They’ll actually keep blooming, even more vigorously, through temperatures into the 40s. Keep them in planters that can easily be moved inside during a frost, but otherwise keep them out to keep enjoying their beautiful colors through the fall.