Hedycium gingers are not a reliable perennial for me in my yard. They do much better in a southern zone 7 where the ground doesn't freeze as deeply so I usually dig them up and bring them in the garage. This year all the rhizomes I left outside came back with a vengeance.
The overnight low in my garden was 3F. It was the coldest night in nearly a decade, but it was otherwise an incredibly mild winter so the ground never got very cold. The tropical perennials never felt the true blast of winter and they came up beautifully!
For new gardeners, here's a little breakdown on USDA zones.
The USDA zones are an incredible general guide for gardeners deciding what to plant in their landscapes. They define how cold the coldest night of the year is. My backyard is in a zone 7, but we're more limited than the zone 7 climates in the southeast because the winter sun angle is lower and the daytime high temperatures are much colder.
Hedychium coronarium (butterfly ginger) growing beautifully in a pot with Tradescanthia sillamontana after overwintering in the garage. I've been growing them like this for a decade now.
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| May 17 |
I was not expecting the rhizomes I left in the ground to come back. They were planted very shallow.
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| June 1 |
This was my first year growing Hedychium Daniel Weeks in the ground. It's coming up beautifully.
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| May 29 |
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| June 18 |
"Daniel Weeks" is an exciting ginger for northern gardeners. Not only has it proven to be cold tolerant without mulch for me, but it's also an early bloomer. Gingers typically bloom in late summer and early Autumn - rarely reaching their fullest potential before frost knocks them for the year. Daniel Weeks starts blooming in August!
That's not to say you won't get beautiful blooms up here from other Hedychiums. "Vanilla Ice" blooms from September to Frost and has beautiful white specks on its foliage all season. It's a stunner!
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| October 27 |
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