Overwinter 🦋 Plants...Indoors?

What to Consider Overwintering for a head start on your 2025 Garden

October 12, 2024

Greetings Good GROWer 🎃

This weekend brings our first frost of the season🥶…which means it’s time to decide if we want to overwinter any plants not winter-hardy to our USDA hardiness zone…5a.

We used to overwinter a dozen plants or more, but that was too much work, and definitely not worth the effort, in most cases.

In recent years, we’ve narrowed it down to only a few plants where it will have the most positive impact for next season’s garden.

So, what factors do we consider to make these overwintering decisions?

Plants to Consider OVERWINTERING Indoors

This has become a less frequent event in recent years, but this season we will be bringing in four plants:

  1. False Banana Plant

a. not hardy to 5a

b. showy addition to downstairs atrium

a. not hardy to zone 5a

b. can’t find this variety/intense color locally in Minnesota (not sure what variety)

c. attracts more pollinators than other lantana varieties we’ve planted…including monarchs (see video of the actual plant by clicking the ‘lantana plant’ link above and scrolling down)

a. not hardy to zone 5a

b. does not perform well as a first year plant in our region

c. not available locally

  1. ‘Amistad’ Salvia

a. not hardy to zone 5a

b. favorite hummingbird plant in our garden the past two seasons

c. difficult to source locally

d. grows quickly if you purchase a small plant so that would be a reason NOT to overwinter and replace next season


If you’re considering overwintering any plants from your garden, here’s more info about what to consider before making those decisions and why:

Coming Up Next Week

I’ll be back with photos of our overwintered plants AND to tell you how we insure that we’re only overwinters plants, and NOT bugs! 🐜🐞🕷️😱


Support Monarchs + Beneficial Pollinators:


Until Next time,

Tony your Butterfly Guide