Who doesn’t want plants with beautiful flowers and green leaves? Large floral displays give your garden an eye-popping color in spring and summer, while evergreen foliage offers year-round constancy.
Check out some of the year-round blooming types and fill your flowerbed or yard for an eye-catching January-January look!
1. Rhododendrons
Rhododendron flowers can come in many colors, including lavender, white, pink, and a reddish hue. Its evergreen leaves are prized almost as much as the flowers and can be quite large. ‘Cynthia’, a cultivar of the Catawba rhododendron bush, are 15 cm long. Grow it in full sun to partial shade.
2. Azalea
The rhododendron genus also includes azaleas. Only a few of the latter are evergreen, a magnificent example being the Stewartstonian species.
What’s so great about this type is that it offers beauty during three seasons: red flowers in spring, red foliage in fall, and green leaves in winter months. The plant reaches 1.2 m to 1.5 m in height, with a similar spread.
3. Mountain laurel
The unbroken foliage can provide fabulous visual interest even when it’s no longer attached to your plant.
Enthusiasts love the species for offering green twigs (wide or needle-like leaves) to make wreaths and other Christmas decorations. They appear in large clusters in late spring. The unusually shaped buds are a darker color than the open flowers (which are usually white or light pink).
4. Andromeda
Pieris japonica, another name given to andromeda, is a shrub that flowers in early spring. Its new foliage is orange-bronze. Cultivars have been developed with new leaves that are bright red.
Even during winter, Pieris japonica offers: red flower buds, before opening to become hanging clusters of white flowers, and green leaves. It likes partial shade and can reach 1.8 to 82.4 m in height, with a similar spread.
5. Winter Heath
Erica carnea and its hybrid, erica x darleyensis (which demands full sun), are small plants that offer pink “flowers” for months at a time. The trick here is that they have long-lasting sepals rather than short-lived petals.
Winter Heath is not just a genre (Erica Carnea), but also a family. Erica, Rhododendron, Kalmia and Pieris belong to this large family of perennial flowering plants. But compared to the other three, the leaves here are quite needle-like. This family loves acidic soils.
6. Daphne
Daphne x burkwoodi is technically only semi-evergreen, but it makes up for it by being variegated. The flowers are very fragrant, white to light pink, tubular and grow in clusters in sun to partial shade.
7. Amamélis
Here, the winters are not very harsh. Its flowers are hot pink, but it is best known for its burgundy-tinged leaves and arching branches.
8. Minor Vinca
A blue flowering vine, it is prized as a ground cover for shade where its broad green leaves will always look beautiful. Before planting it, however, check that it is locally invasive.
9. Creeping phlox
Creeping phlox is a perennial ground cover that needs full sun. This plant features small leaves and is grown mostly for its color and number of flowers – they can display pink, red, pink, white, blue, purple, lavender or bicolor shades.
10. Iberis sempervirens
Technically a subshrub, most gardeners treat iberis sempervirens as a perennial. White, with lavender undertones, you can prune them to keep new green leaves coming.
11. Lenten rose
Helleborus orientalis is a species with glossy, leathery, evergreen leaves. The flowers come in a variety of colors including purple, pink, yellow, green, blue, lavender and red.
*Via The Spruce