While the majority of native plants are bare and gray in winter, winter jasmine stands out with its yellow flowers. You can get tips on cultivation and care here.
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Winter jasmine – robust and versatile
Winter jasmine is the ideal plant to add some color to your garden in winter. Unlike many other flowering plants, winter jasmine has chosen the cold season to develop magnificent inflorescences.
Depending on the weather, its lush yellow flower carpet shines between December and March. At first glance, the small yellow leaves of the olive resemble forsythia or broom, but on closer inspection they show differences: Winter jasmine bears larger flowers than forsythia and forms numerous leaflets arranged in a circle around the inside of the flower.
Winter jasmine is ideal for keeping balconies and gardens green all year round. You can plant it both outdoors or cultivate it as a container plant and place it on your balcony or in the front garden. Thanks to its flexible shoots, winter jasmine is suitable both as a hanging plant and as a climbing plant.
Ideal location for winter jasmine
Winter jasmine is a very grateful and easy to care for plant. All the more beautiful that it rewards you in the deepest winter with its sunny yellow flowers. To enjoy your winter bloomer for many years, you should consider a few things for the ideal location:
Tips for location and soil
Winter jasmine prefers a wind-protected location (for example, along a wall or the side of a house).
Light conditions are ideally sunny to partial shade. Winter jasmine does not particularly like a location that is too dark.
As far as the soil is concerned, the winter bloomer is quite undemanding. However, a nutrient-rich and preferably calcareous soil is optimal.
Wintering of winter jasmine
To develop particularly rich flowers, you should not expose the winter jasmine to prolonged frost. Although the shrub easily tolerates temperatures down to -15 degrees, its delicate flowers then react sensitively and can freeze to death in prolonged cold. However, you need not fear that the plant will die. In prolonged sub-zero temperatures, the winter jasmine simply takes a break from flowering. Unopened buds will sprout after the temperature rises.
Winter jasmine can be grown not only outdoors, but also in containers as a potted plant. During the winter months you should wrap the containers with mats made of raffia or coconut (available at** Amazon), so that the sensitive roots do not get cold. You can cover the root area of your outdoor jasmine in winter with a warming layer of foliage or mats.
Care of the winter jasmine
Watering and fertilizing
Winter jasmine is a hardy plant and well adapted to local weather conditions. If it grows outdoors, no further watering is required under normal weather conditions with regular rainfall.
However, the pretty shrub does not tolerate long periods of drought. Especially in summer, you should therefore water your winter jasmine regularly. However, make sure that it does not become waterlogged, as its roots will not tolerate this.
Fertilizing is not absolutely necessary for winter jasmine. However, if you want to do something good for your plant, you can pamper it with some compost, or lime-based organic fertilizer in the spring. It will thank you with a particularly lush bloom in the winter.
Regular pruning
- The best time to plant a winter jasmine is in the spring. After the previous bloom, you should cut the shoots back to about one-fifth in April at the latest. This will give the shrub time to resprout and form flower spikes on the young shoots until next winter.
- In the first few years, winter jasmine grows relatively slowly. However, regular pruning is already essential. Otherwise, the shoots will become very long and spread uncontrollably. Since winter jasmine only develops flowers on the young, mostly one-year-old shoots, deadwood and bare spots will quickly form without pruning.
- You should also make sure to remove the so-called absconders. This is the name given to the long, flexible shoots of winter jasmine that lie back in the soil at their ends and form new roots there. Too many suckers take a lot of energy away from the mother plant.
- If you grow your winter jasmine into a climbing plant – for example, to green your house wall – make sure to offer it a climbing aid. Unlike other climbing plants, winter jasmine does not form climbing organs and is dependent on external climbing aids.
