Are you looking for the best cold tolerant plants you can grow in your garden? Then you’ve come to the right place!
Knowing which plants can survive freezing temperatures is important, but choosing them can be challenging.
Don’t worry! We’ve compiled a list of the best cold hardy plants to decorate your garden. Let’s go!
1. Sweet Woodruff
Sweet woodruff is a low-maintenance woodland ground cover. It prefers garden areas that are partially shaded.
It also prefers moist, rich soil that drains well. Their leaves are usually bright green and deeply lobed. It blooms in late spring with tiny white flowers.
Sweet woodruff looks great planted with other perennials like hostas, rhubarb, and astilbe. It keeps the weeds at bay, retains moisture, and creates a lush appearance.
It is extremely simple to transplant in the garden. Just dig it up and replant it somewhere else. It doesn’t even go limp but rather thrives in its new home.
2. Vinca Vine
This is also among the best cold-tolerant plants on this list. Always research an area before planting it because it can be invasive there. Periwinkle flowers bloom there.
This vine prefers soil that is moist, free-draining, and partially shaded. It’s a tough plant that also does well in drought.
You can plant weeds underneath my hosta gardens to prevent them and keep moisture. The way it hangs down like ivy makes it perfect for spring pots.
3. Blue Spruce
The blue spruce tree is an exceptionally beautiful winter plant and looks lovely when covered in snow.
This tree is best in full sun and makes an excellent wind, sound, and visual screen. Use insecticides sparingly on this tree since they may remove the needle coating that gives the plant its color.
4. Wintergreen Boxwood
Another attractive plant in a snowy landscape is the wintergreen boxwood, and it’s also among the best cold tolerant plants.
For winter protection, its shallow roots need a thick layer of mulch. Wintergreen boxwood can be used as a hedge since it is versatile.
This type of boxwood resists typical boxwood pests better than other varieties.
5. Catmint
Catmint is a wonderful, resilient substitute for lavender because of its beautiful purplish color and fragrant nature.
Additionally, this flower is particularly tough. Deer resistance aside, it can withstand drought, partial sun, and even poor soil conditions.
6. Pansies
Pansies can withstand shockingly low temperatures, but it’s still vital to use frost-protection methods in the winter, such as mulching or covering them with pine straw.
In addition, this will shield them from the pansies’ insatiable thirst-quenching winds. Pansies can even be planted in the late winter, so they bloom in the early spring.
7. Winterberries
This plant also falls under the list of the best cold tolerant plants. Winterberries are a well-known winter plant that is often associated with holiday decorations.
When planted in the fall, these plants can withstand cold temperatures as low as Zone 2. Winterberries will give wonderful color to your winter garden, and they prefer full sun and rich soil.
8. Coneflower
Although the coneflower loses its lovely purple hue in freezing weather conditions, it will recover in the spring and grow stronger than ever with the right care.
It is best to place them where they will receive direct sunlight. Trim the dead stems after these flowers have gone dormant and support them with 1-2 inches of mulch for protection.
9. Angelina Sedum
The Angelina sedum is a ground cover with soft, spiky spires. It’s also among the best cold tolerant plants. It has vivid red and orange tips when it first appears in the spring.
Then, throughout the summer, it turns a vivid golden-yellow color. It produces stalks of yellow flowers, which are appealing. Angelina is ideal for gardens with full sun.
Weeds are kept at bay by the dense mat of succulent foliage that it creates. It can appear out of practically any crevice or nook. The little roots will aid in stopping erosion.
10. Cheddar Pinks
Cheddar pinks are a beautiful evergreen perennial plant. The leaves are slender and silvery blue. Then, when it blooms in the summer, a carpet of tiny pink stars-shaped flowers appears.
These flowers are a form of dianthus, which are frequently grown as annuals and perennials, so you might recognize them.
They prefer fully exposed areas with well-drained soil. They leave a thick layer of soil on top, which prevents weed growth and keeps the soil green all year.
11. Creeping Thyme
This is an easy-growing plant and also among the best cold tolerant plants. Many gardeners dream of having a creeping thyme lawn.
It starts out as a low-growing mat of little leaves, but in the spring, the entire carpet of it blooms in purple.
And if you walk on it or brush your hands across it, it smells fantastic. It prefers sandy soil and full sun. It can replace grass or creep along pathways and rock gardens.
12. Lungwort
Lungwort is an excellent plant for difficult-to-grow areas. It can flourish in arid and shaded environments. Lungwort is a shade-tolerant perennial that will grow under large evergreens.
It produces tiny pink and purple bell-shaped flowers in the very early spring. Then it develops broad, pointed leaves with random frosted patches on them.
Make sure to wear gloves when handling the leaves because they are scratchy and hairy.
13. Creeping Phlox
The creeping phlox is a perennial among the best cold tolerant plants. It creeps low to the ground and has spiky green foliage.
Most of the time, it doesn’t appear like much, but it turns into a mat of flowers with star-like petals in the spring.
There are many different colors, such as white, pink, and lavender. Also, other variations are multicolored and candy-striped.
Creeping phlox prefers environments with some shade and some sun. Weeds cannot grow through the thick mat that it creates. It remains green all year long.
14. Snow In Summer
Snow in summer is a herbaceous perennial plant. It has slender, silvery leaves. It develops a dense mat that is flat on the ground and keeps the weeds at bay.
This perennial prefers sandy soil and direct sunlight. It looks fantastic, bordering a perennial bed and spilling over ledges.
The magnificent display occurs in the summer when the entire area is draped with delicate white five-petaled blossoms.
15. Candytuft
Candytuft is also among the best cold tolerant plants in your garden. In the early spring, it blossoms into a carpet of white flowers with ball-like shapes.
It does not like sitting in water and prefers partial sun and shade. Plants should be grown in soil that is loose and well-drained. It seems green and scrubby once it blooms in the spring.
When it isn’t in bloom, you hardly even notice it. To replace it once it blooms, it is advised to plant some other flowers close by.
Although the plant looks a little scraggly, the magnificent spring blooms make it worthwhile to plant.
16. Dragon’s Blood Stonecrop
This is the best plant for tough sunny areas. The Dragon’s Blood Stonecrop prefers sandy soil, lots of sunlight, and minimal water.
This succulent forms tiny rosettes of dark maroon clusters with green centers. Weeds find it difficult to grow through the dense mat it generates. In the late summer, it produces pink flowers.
This is an excellent plant for rock gardens, along rocky garden walkways, or anywhere else you want to keep the weeds down with little effort.
Any tiny crevice or opening will allow it to flow out and move through. The purple foliage is a wonderful way to decorate your yard as well.
17. Variegated Bishop’s Goutweed
The goutweed is also among the best cold tolerant plants. Once planted, it is quite invasive and difficult to eradicate. Even some gardeners think it’s a weed.
So before planting it, give it a lot of thought. It will start encroaching on your yard and consuming other plants.
The roots are solid and challenging to get out. It will return no matter how hard you attempt to eliminate it.
You might wonder why somebody would plant this after reading such a review. However, there are some circumstances where this could serve as your ground cover, particularly if you have areas where it is impossible to produce anything.
Goutweed doesn’t mind the soil and can survive in the sun and shade. They don’t require much additional water once they’ve been established.
18. Tidal Pool Creeping Speedwell
One of the most uncommon colors in the garden is true blue. The creeping speedwell “Tidal Pool” is a pure blue color.
It is a woolly plant with slow growth. Speedwell prefers loose sandy soil and partial sun exposure.
Speedwell is also great for walkways and driveways. It can survive if you salt your sidewalks in the winter because it is relatively salt tolerant.
The shrub is covered in tiny blue trumpet-shaped blooms with white centers in the early spring. It is breathtaking when it is in bloom.
However, the season-long beauty of the wooly green foliage cannot be denied.
Conclusion
There you have it – the best cold tolerant plants you can grow in your garden.
There’s no denying that these plants add a layer of interest wherever they’re planted.
So make sure to include a few cold, hardy plants in your garden and enjoy beautiful blooms all year round!
