12 Landscaping Ideas You Should Try Right Now for Color All Winter Long

Use Evergreens

Evergreens truly live up to their name. With tough, wavy leaves or needles, evergreens have evolved over millennia to adapt to the harshest conditions. Plant boxwoods, holly, arborvitae, yew, juniper, or any other type of evergreen as a dependable, low-maintenance winter landscaping idea.

Rely on Hardscaping

Hardscaping is anything in your landscape that isn’t alive, and this includes functional but decorative elements like flagstone paving, decks, water features, retaining walls, and patios. Winter is the perfect time to focus on installing or enjoying any of these hardscaping ideas.

Plant Winter-Hardy Flowers

Flowers are associated with spring, but winter has a full complement of beautiful flowers and flowering plants, too. Choose winter flowers like primrose, winter aconite, camellia, snowdrops, or winter heath to keep your yard vibrant and fresh-looking all through the winter.

Grow Winter-Friendly Container Plants

Container plants are great landscaping ideas for winter. Move pots with sensitive plants indoors before a freeze or wrap the pots with burlap as insulation. Leave the pots outside if they have winter-hardy plants like rosemary, holly, or cyclamen, among others.

Install Synthetic Turf

Artificial grass remains green all through the winter, unaffected by snow, ice, or lack of sun. Many types of synthetic grass look more like real grass than ever. While you can install your own artificial grass, this exacting project is often best left in the hands of qualified installers.

Plant Window Boxes

Take your windowbox through all four seasons with winter window box ideas:

• Evergreen boughs
• Candles
• Pine cones
• Dried flowers
• Berry sprigs

Lay Colorful Mulch

Mulching your yard is crucial for keeping your plants healthy during the winter. Mulch insulates roots against freezing temperatures and holds in moisture. Adding colored mulch—mulch that’s dyed brown, red, black, gold, or red—paints staid winter landscapes with swaths of color.

Grow Colorful Winter Shrubs

Winter shrubs grow without interruption from December to February and beyond. Shrubs like inkberry stay fresh and green. Other shrubs, like red twig dogwood, add delightful crimson slashes to a neutral winter landscape.

Brighten With Outdoor Lighting

Holiday lighting is popular during winter, but you can also take your lighting to the next level with garden lighting ideas like:

• Globe lights: Otherworldly orbs illuminate plant beds.
• Lantern lights: Hovering classic lights mark paths.
• Uplights: Spotlight favorite plants.
• Pond lights: Glowing water or ice.

Grow Tall Grasses

Avoid a dormant winter grass lawn with lawn alternatives that stay lively through the cold months. Long grasses like Chinese silver grass overwinter quite attractively. Sedge or Carex plants are perennials that remain unfazed throughout the winter due to their tough rhizome root systems.

Build a Firepit

In winter, gather around the fire for s’mores, hot cocoa, or maybe a glass of wine. Everyone will stay toasty around a simple firepit that you build yourself in a day with retaining wall blocks. Or, make a different type of DIY firepit out of found items like flagstones, a terrarium, concrete pavers, or even a beer keg or part of a washing machine.

Use Berries and Bark

Berries, like chokeberries, are popular winter landscaping ideas due to their bright colors and waxy, thick skins. Red tends to be the most prevalent winter berry color in the form of currants, Linden viburnum, cotoneaster, bunchberry, and numerous types of holly plants.