Year-Round Window Boxes: The Best Plants to Beautify Your Home

One of the best ways to enhance your home’s aesthetics is to frame its windows with plants and flowers. Not only will it improve your home’s curb appeal, but it’ll also make the environment both welcoming and elegant.

The best thing about window boxes is that you can use them anywhere. Whether it’s an apartment or a regular house, you sure will have space for these small plant beds.

However, choosing the plants for your window boxes can be a challenging task, especially if they want something that can grow and bloom all year round.

That’s where my guide comes in, as it contains the best plants for window boxes all year round. So, read each plant type carefully and choose the one that best suits your style and preferences.

Best Plants for Window Boxes All Year Round

Here’s our list of the best plants for window boxes that will grow all year round.

Sweet Potato Vine

• USDA Hardiness Zones: 9 to 11
• Height: 0.5 to 1 feet
• Width: 1 to 3 feet

If you live in a place with the USDA hardiness zone from 9 to 11, you can go with Sweet Potato Vine. It’s an ornamental plant with lush foliage, making it an excellent option for just about any house’s exterior.

It comes in many colors, but the most beautiful ones include the gray-green-pink Tricolor, deep purple Sweetheart, and lime green Margarita. The best thing about this plant is that it’s easy to grow and requires low maintenance.

Pro Tip: Make sure you use high-quality all-purpose potting soil for this plant and place it in a window box with drainage holes in the bottom.

Golden Sword Yucca

• USDA Hardiness Zones: 5 to 11
• Height: 1 to 3 feet
• Width: 3 to 6 feet

Golden Sword Yucca is a grass-like, hardy plant that requires very little maintenance and can easily grow all year round. It makes for a perfect centerpiece when surrounded by colorful flowers like petunias.

The plant bears dramatic, sword-shaped leaves, which have dark green edges and yellow centers. While best suited between fall and spring, it thrives and grows in all seasons.

During summers, Golden Sword Yucca produces tall spikes that bear bell-shaped, fragrant flowers.

Petunias

• USDA Hardiness Zones: 9 to 11
• Height: 1 to 1.5 feet
• Width: 1 to 4 feet

If you live in an area with a warm climate, you can opt for beautiful Petunias. While they die in frost, they can thrive and live in warmer places all year round. They’re summer’s workhorse because they produce vibrant blooms continuously during harsh heat.

Petunias come in shades of purple, pink, red, and white; you can find them in speckled and striped varieties. If you prefer a bushy plant, I recommend you go with wild white petunia (Petunia axillaris).

But if you want something that spills over a window box, consider opting for Surfinia petunias. See also: Do deer eat petunias?

Impatiens

• USDA Hardiness Zones: 10 to 11
• Height: 0.5 to 2.5 feet (depending on the cultivar)
• Width: 1 to 2 feet (depending on the cultivar)

If you live in a frost-free area, you can opt for Impatiens, as they’ll bloom all year round as long as you water them regularly. I recommend you place these plants in deeply shaded window boxes, and you’ll have stunning colors popping out of your window frames.

One of this plant’s most common (and easiest to maintain) varieties is called Impatiens walleriana. It comes in a vast array of colors, including yellow, orange, purple, red, and pink, and grows well in containers.

Pro Tip: If your Impatiens start to get leggy, remove around the top one-third of their growth. They’ll start blooming again to repay you without any delays.

Creeping Jenny

• USDA Hardiness Zones: 3 to 9
• Height: 2 to 4 inches
• Width: 1 to 1.5 feet

Although Creeping Jenny is commonly used as ground cover, it looks amazing in window boxes. 

It’s a densely packed plant available in different shades of gold and green colors. When you place it in a window box, its rounded leaves spill out of the container, which looks stunning.

Since the plant is suitable for hardiness zones 3 to 9, it is hardy and can easily survive cold winters. However, in colder regions, it’ll disappear completely during the winter but will come back in the spring.

Wintergreen

• USDA Hardiness Zones: 3 to 7
• Height: 4 to 6 inches
• Width: 3 to 3.5 feet

Wintergreen, also known as Gaultheria procumbens, is another perfect choice for window boxes. It’s an evergreen plant best suited for people living in cold areas. It bears white flowers and red berries during the blooming period and has short-stalked, thick leaves throughout the year.

The color of Wintergreen’s leaves ranges from bright green to purple, and it thrives in full to part shade. Keep in mind that this plant can be toxic, so make sure that you wear gloves while handling it.

Blue Star Juniper

• USDA Hardiness Zones: 4 to 8
• Height: 2 to 3 feet
• Width: 1 to 4 feet

Growing the Blue Star Juniper plant in your window boxes is another great way to enhance your house’s curb appeal. It is a colorful plant that grows slowly and needs to be pruned occasionally.

This evergreen plant has slender and long-needled leaves with bright steel blue coloring, which means it’s compact. It makes for a perfect option for people who don’t want a plant that spreads across an entire window.

Coleus

• USDA Hardiness Zones: 10 to 11
• Height: 0.5 to 3.5 feet
• Width: 1 to 3 feet

If your area has the USDA hardiness zone of 10 or 11, you can plant Coleus in your window boxes, and they’ll grow all year round. The best thing about this plant is that it’s easy to grow and can survive with other flowering plants as well.

Therefore, it makes for the best option for window boxes that already have flowering plants with some space left. It’ll act as a filler and make the base of flowers more appealing.

The leaves of the Coleus plant have different shades of purple, pink, red, and green, which look stunning. While it was originally a shade plant, new hybrid varieties available in the market can thrive in partial and even full sun.

Licorice Plant

• USDA Hardiness Zones: 9 to 11
• Height: 1 to 1.5 feet
• Width: Around 3 feet

Licorice Plant is popular for its unique foliage and is an excellent filler option for window boxes. It comes with fuzzy, silvery-white leaves, which add a subtle appeal to the pots containing other flowering plants or shrubs.

The biggest benefit of using this plant is that it can keep garden pests away from your pots. It requires low maintenance and can glow in low sun as well.

Vinca

• USDA Hardiness Zones: 6 to 11
• Height: 1 to 1.5 feet
• Width: 1 to 2 feet

Vinca is a popular flowering plant with an elegant array of bright flowers and glossy foliage. While the plant produces flowers only during the blooming period (from summer to fall), it doesn’t die out and remains green throughout the year.

Vinca flowers have different colors, including white, red, purple, and pink, and they look amazing in window boxes. One of the best things about this plant is that it’s drought tolerant and can easily survive even the harshest summer days without water.

So, if you’re a beginner and want to have window boxes with colorful plants, Vinca can be the best option for you.

Salvia

• USDA Hardiness Zones: 5 to 9
• Height: 1 to 3 feet
• Width: 1 to 3 feet

While salvia can die in winter if the soil is too cold, I’ve added it to this list because of its survivability in a wide range of USDA hardiness zones. Additionally, you only need to plant it once, and it’ll come back to life year after year.

It’s low-maintenance, drought-resistant, and long-lasting. It comes in various colors, including blue, violet, white, pink, and red. Another great feature of this plant is that it repels garden pests and attracts good creatures, such as butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees.

For Further Reading

• Unleash Your Green Thumb with a Wooden Plant Pot

Final Words

Choosing the best plants for window boxes all year round can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. All you need to do is figure out the hardiness zone of your area and use this guide to choose the best options.

Use the right soil and window box type for each, depending on their unique needs. Lastly, don’t forget to take care of them as needed to ensure they remain healthy.