Welcome to Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day for January 2026.
Here in my USDA Hardiness Zone 6a garden in central Indiana, we are enjoying a mild winter. There’s no snow on the ground, and the frigid temperatures of early December are forgotten, for now.
Wait. Check that. After I wrote this post around lunchtime, temperatures dropped, and snow flurries began. By mid-afternoon, there were enough patches of snow around to show that it is indeed winter.
I went outside to look for blooms—in the morning before the weather changed— though I knew from looking around the garden the last several days that I’d find three flowers.
First, I found a sizable clump of snowdrops. I don’t know what variety these are, but I know that for the last several years, they’ve been coming up in late fall and then generally blooming all winter. This clump has also been slowly getting bigger every year.
Next, I checked on the Christmas roses, Helleborus niger. They aren’t as flowery as I’d like, but I did find a few old blooms, enough to declare, “It’s flowering!”
Then I moved to the front garden, where I’ve been watching a little viola with one decent looking bloom.
It counts too!
And that is all I found blooming outside.
Though I did look for crocuses. Why? Because I had this brilliant idea that I’d include links to my past bloom day posts for each month this year, so that it would be easy for me to compare this month to the same month in past years. Looking for all those old posts reminded me that I once found a crocus blooming in January. Hence, I must look for them every year now.
Here are those links for January Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day posts (mostly for me to refer back to!):
2008 – One little indoor bloom. Pathetic, but the garden sure looked different 18 years ago.
2009 – Snow on the ground, nothing blooming outside. I needed to up my winter gardening game, clearly,
2010 – Also snow on the ground, but not too much. Still nothing blooming outside. Boring.
2011 – Another snowy January. Enough said about that.
2012 – Yet another snowy January, but I did have some nice blooms on a hellebore. Now I’m making progress!
2013 – Brief warm-up up and I had a crocus in bloom, which is why I looked for one today.
2014 – I didn’t even report on what was going outside, but I did force lily of the valley into bloom, which I recall was quite nice..
2015 – Again, no report of anything outside, just indoor blooms.
2016 – Another hellebore in the snow, plus inside blooms.
2017 – No snow, but no blooms anywhere, either.
2018 – Snow on the ground, and the only bloom I recorded was forced lily of the valley inside.
2019 – Big snowstorm, lots of snow on the ground.
2020 – No snow, just some hellebores in bloom.
2021 – From the department of redundancy department, more hellebores in bloom.
2022 – Another mild, snow-less day. Looks like it was sunny when I took pictures. I featured a dandelion!
2023 – Snowdrops and hellebores. I could copy this post for this year!
2024 – Arctic blast and lots of snow on the snowdrops, but they were blooming.
2025 – A decidely snow-covered garden, and it had been for about 10 days prior.
Now, to make this year’s record complete, let me also note that indoors I have amaryllis bulbs, poinsettias, and a Crown of Thorns houseplant blooming. In the garage under lights, I have pelargoniums and one little oxalis also blooming.
And just about to re-bloom is a moth orchid.
Now my record for 2026 is complete, wrapping up my 19th year of posting on my blog about what’s blooming in my garden on or around the 15th of the month. (Remember, it started in February 2007.) Next month, I’ll start the 20th year, and I’m going to end it after that because 20 is a nice number to end on.
Your turn!
What’s blooming in your garden today? I’d love to have you join me for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day and share what you have blooming in or out of your garden today, around the 15th of the month.
It’s easy to participate. Post on. your blog, Substack, Instagram, or wherever you share online, about what’s blooming now in your garden. Then come back here and leave a comment to tell us what you have with a link back to you. (The Mr. Linky widget hasn’t been working too well these past few times, and I’ve not taken the time to sort that out, so we’ll skip it for the time being.)
And always remember the quote that inspired this meme:
“We can have flowers nearly every month of the year.” – Elizabeth Lawrence
With a shared love of gardening,
Carol
I appreciate the detail — very helpful indeed. Will try it.