Lantana is a tropical and subtropical shrub that dies back or dies outright when temperatures drop near freezing, so gardeners in cooler climates need a plan to keep it alive through winter. The three most reliable approaches are dormant storage in a cool indoor space, active indoor growing under adequate light, and rooting fresh stem cuttings in late summer or early fall to start new plants for the following year. Each method suits different living situations, and the one you pick depends largely on how much space and light you can spare indoors.
Why Lantana Cannot Survive a Typical Winter Outdoors
Lantana is native to tropical and subtropical regions and has very little tolerance for cold. Research modeling the plant’s global distribution found that it seldom occurs naturally where temperatures frequently fall below 5 °C (about 41 °F), and prolonged freezing kills the woody branches above ground and strips the plant of its leaves.1PLOS ONE. Climate Change and the Potential Distribution of an Invasive Shrub, Lantana camara L. – Section: Materials and Methods Even temperatures that stay above freezing but dip into the low single digits Celsius can cause real damage. Studies on lantana cuttings exposed to simulated cold-shipping conditions showed chilling injury marked by increased cell-membrane leakage and a spike in reactive oxygen species, the kind of cellular stress that weakens or kills tissue.2Postharvest Biology and Technology. Characterization of chilling injury in Heliotropium arborescens and Lantana camara cuttings – Section: Abstract In practical terms, a lantana left outside in USDA zones 8 and below will almost certainly lose all its top growth in a normal winter, and in zones 7 and colder the roots are at serious risk too.
This cold sensitivity is what makes overwintering a real concern for anyone growing lantana as a perennial rather than treating it as a disposable annual. If you garden in zone 9 or warmer, your lantana may survive outdoors with little or no intervention. Everywhere else, one of the three methods below is the difference between buying new plants every spring and keeping the same plants for years.
Method 1: Dormant Storage in a Cool, Dark Space
This is the lowest-effort approach and works well for gardeners who have a garage, basement, unheated spare room, or similar space that stays above freezing but remains cool through winter. The idea is simple: you let the plant go dormant and keep it barely alive until spring.
Before the first hard frost, dig up your in-ground lantana or bring in any potted plants. If the lantana is in the ground, you’ll want to pot it up a week or two before moving it indoors so the roots have a little time to adjust. Cut the plant back hard, leaving just a few inches of woody stem above the soil line. This sounds drastic, but a dormant lantana does not need foliage and will push new growth in spring. Removing the top growth also makes storage much easier and reduces the chance of mold or pest problems during the months ahead.
Place the potted plant in a location where the temperature stays roughly between 4 °C and 10 °C (about 40–50 °F). Light is not necessary during dormancy, so a dark corner of the garage works fine. Water sparingly, just enough to keep the soil from going bone-dry. Once every three to four weeks is a reasonable starting point, though the exact frequency depends on how dry the air is. You want the soil barely damp, not wet. Overwatering a dormant lantana is the single most common way to lose it over winter, because soggy soil invites root rot when the plant isn’t actively drinking.
The plant will look dead for months. The stems will be brown and bare. This is normal. Resist the urge to water more or move it somewhere warmer. As long as the stems have a hint of green under the bark when you scratch them with a fingernail, the plant is alive and resting.
Method 2: Growing Lantana Indoors as an Active Houseplant
If you’d rather keep your lantana green and even flowering through winter, you can grow it indoors in a bright spot. This takes more effort than dormant storage but gives you a living plant to enjoy year-round.
Lantana is a full-sun plant outdoors, which understandably makes people skeptical about indoor growing. However, research on lantana grown in a light-restricted indoor environment found that plants maintained good vegetative development even when the light they received was roughly 25 times lower than natural outdoor sunlight. The plants stayed in a healthy state with no visible nutrient deficiency symptoms, provided they received regular water and fertilizer.3Ciência Rural. Lantana flowering at an indoor active living wall in a light-restricted environment – Section: Results That study used supplemental LED lighting, which is a practical option for home growers whose sunniest window still does not provide enough light during short winter days.
The key steps for this method:
- Location: A south-facing window is ideal. If natural light is limited, a basic grow light running for 10 to 14 hours a day can bridge the gap. Even inexpensive LED shop-style grow lights put out enough photons for lantana to stay green and compact.
- Temperature: Normal household temperatures between 15 °C and 24 °C (60–75 °F) are fine. Avoid placing the plant near cold drafts from windows or exterior doors.
- Watering: Water when the top inch or so of soil feels dry. Indoor air in winter tends to be drier than outdoor summer air, so check every few days. Lantana does not like sitting in water, so make sure the pot drains freely.
- Fertilizer: Feed lightly every few weeks with a balanced liquid fertilizer at half strength. Growth slows indoors, so the plant does not need as much nutrition as it does in summer.
Don’t expect the same explosion of blooms you see outdoors in July. Indoor lantana typically produces fewer flowers and grows more slowly, but it stays alive, green, and healthy. Some gardeners find that giving the plant a light trim every few weeks keeps it compact rather than leggy. When spring comes, a lantana that has been growing all winter can go back outside with a head start over one that spent the winter dormant.
Method 3: Rooting Stem Cuttings in Late Summer or Early Fall
This method doesn’t save the mother plant. Instead, you take cuttings from your existing lantana in late summer or early fall, root them, and grow the new small plants indoors through winter. It’s a good option if your lantana is too large to bring inside, if you want to share plants with friends, or if you simply prefer starting fresh each year with vigorous young growth.
Take cuttings about 7 to 10 cm (3–4 inches) long from healthy, non-flowering stem tips. Strip the leaves from the bottom half of each cutting, dip the cut end in rooting hormone if you have it, and stick the cutting into moist potting mix or perlite. Cover the pot loosely with a clear plastic bag or a humidity dome to keep moisture levels high while roots develop. Place the setup in a warm spot with bright indirect light. Most lantana cuttings root within two to four weeks.
Handle lantana cuttings gently and avoid exposing them to cold during the process. Even chilling temperatures that stay above freezing can damage lantana tissue, causing cell-membrane stress that compromises the cutting’s ability to root successfully.2Postharvest Biology and Technology. Characterization of chilling injury in Heliotropium arborescens and Lantana camara cuttings – Section: Abstract Room temperature is fine. Once rooted, pot the cuttings individually and grow them on a sunny windowsill or under a grow light, treating them the same way as Method 2 plants through the rest of winter.
The advantage of cuttings is size. A rooted cutting in a small pot takes up almost no space compared to dragging a large established lantana indoors. You also sidestep any pest problems the parent plant may have picked up over summer, since the small cuttings can be inspected and cleaned easily. The tradeoff is obvious: come spring, you’re planting a small young plant, not a large established one, so it takes longer to fill out and bloom heavily.
Picking the Right Method for Your Situation
The best method is whichever one you can actually pull off given your space and light conditions. A few practical guidelines help narrow the choice:
- Limited space, limited light: Dormant storage wins. A pot in a dark corner of a garage barely counts as “taking up space,” and you don’t need any light at all.
- Bright window or grow lights available: Active indoor growing is worth the effort if you enjoy having a green, occasionally flowering plant through winter. You get a bigger, more mature plant in spring than with the other methods.
- Multiple plants or very large specimens: Take cuttings. Trying to bring five full-sized lantana indoors is a logistical headache. A handful of rooted cuttings in small pots by a window is far more manageable.
- Sentimental or unusual variety: If you have a cultivar that’s hard to find or took years to reach a particular size, dormant storage or active indoor growing lets you keep that exact plant. Cuttings produce genetic clones, so the variety is preserved, but you lose the established root system and branching structure.
Some gardeners combine methods. They take a few cuttings as insurance and also bring the mother plant indoors for dormant storage. If the mother plant survives, great. If it doesn’t, the cuttings are the backup. This belt-and-suspenders approach is especially sensible for rare cultivars.
Preparing the Plant Before Moving It Indoors
Regardless of which method you choose, the transition from outdoor to indoor life works better when you take a few preparatory steps.
Inspect the plant thoroughly for pests. Whiteflies and spider mites love lantana, and bringing an infested plant into your home means bringing those pests right to your other houseplants. If you see any, treat the plant with insecticidal soap or a strong spray of water to knock the bugs off before bringing it inside. If the infestation is severe, cuttings from clean-looking stems may be a better bet than trying to rehabilitate the whole plant.
Time the move before the first frost, not after. A lantana that has already been hit by frost has suffered tissue damage, and recovering from that stress while simultaneously adjusting to indoor conditions is a lot to ask. Watch your local forecast and move the plant inside when nighttime lows start regularly hitting 10 °C (50 °F). Research on lantana’s global range reinforces that the plant begins accumulating cold stress once monthly minimum temperatures drop below 5 °C, so getting ahead of that threshold is wise.1PLOS ONE. Climate Change and the Potential Distribution of an Invasive Shrub, Lantana camara L. – Section: Materials and Methods
If you’re potting up an in-ground plant, dig generously around the root ball. Lantana has a vigorous root system, and cutting through too many roots during transplanting adds stress on top of the environmental change. Use a pot large enough that the roots aren’t jammed in tight, with drainage holes on the bottom. Standard potting mix works fine.
Bringing Lantana Back Outdoors in Spring
Moving a lantana back outside too early is just as risky as leaving it out too late in fall. Wait until nighttime temperatures are consistently above 10 °C (50 °F), which usually means mid to late spring depending on your location. A surprise late frost can undo an entire winter’s worth of effort.
Harden the plant off gradually. After months indoors, the leaves and stems are not conditioned for direct sun and wind. Start with a few hours of outdoor time in a shaded spot, increasing the duration and sun exposure over a week or two. This prevents sunscald, where leaves that were adapted to low indoor light suddenly bleach and burn in full sun.
For dormant plants, the transition back to active growth can be a little nerve-wracking. Move the pot to a warmer, brighter spot indoors a few weeks before you plan to set it outside. Begin watering a bit more frequently. Within a couple of weeks, you should see tiny green buds emerging from the old woody stems. If nothing appears after a month of warmer conditions and regular watering, scratch the bark. If the tissue beneath is green, be patient. If it’s brown and dry all the way through, the plant didn’t make it. This is where those backup cuttings earn their keep.
Dormant-stored plants look rough when they first push new growth, and it takes several weeks of outdoor warmth for them to fill in. Don’t judge the plant by how it looks in April. By mid-June it will be bushy and blooming as though nothing happened.
Zones Where Overwintering Is Optional
Lantana is reliably winter-hardy outdoors in USDA zones 9 through 11, where winter lows rarely approach freezing. In zone 8, some gardeners get away with leaving lantana in the ground if they apply a thick mulch layer (10 to 15 cm of shredded leaves or straw) over the root zone after the plant dies back naturally. The mulch insulates the roots enough that the crown survives even if all the top growth freezes. This works best in zone 8b and gets increasingly unreliable as you move toward colder zone 8a winters.
In zone 7 and colder, outdoor overwintering is not worth attempting. Even with heavy mulch, the ground freezes deeply enough to kill the roots. Some gardeners try it every year and occasionally succeed in mild winters, but counting on it means losing your plants whenever a real cold snap hits. One of the three indoor methods is a far safer bet.
It’s also worth knowing that lantana’s cold hardiness varies a bit by cultivar. Some selections bred for northern landscapes, often sold as “hardy lantana,” can handle slightly colder conditions than the straight species. These are typically Lantana camara hybrids selected for improved root survival. Even with these tougher cultivars, zone 7 is the practical lower limit for outdoor overwintering with mulch, and they still die to the ground each winter, regrowing from the roots in spring. In zone 6 and below, no amount of cultivar selection replaces bringing the plant indoors.
Handling Lantana Safely Indoors
Lantana is toxic if ingested. All parts of the plant, but especially the unripe berries, contain compounds called lantadenes that can cause liver damage in animals and gastrointestinal distress in people. This is well established in veterinary and toxicology literature and is worth keeping in mind when you’re moving lantana into your living space for the winter.
If you have curious pets, particularly dogs or cats that chew on houseplants, place the lantana somewhere they cannot reach. A high shelf, a room they don’t access, or a hanging planter all work. The same goes for households with small children. The risk isn’t from touching the plant or from being in the same room; it’s specifically from eating the leaves or berries. Dormant plants that have been cut back to bare stems are essentially a non-issue since there’s nothing leafy or berry-like to attract a nibbling pet. Active indoor plants and rooted cuttings with foliage deserve more caution in placement.
Contact with lantana leaves can occasionally cause mild skin irritation in sensitive individuals, so wearing gloves during pruning and handling is a reasonable precaution. This is a minor point for most people but worth mentioning if you have a known sensitivity to plant sap.