How to Care for Hyacinth Before and After Flowering

• Written by Holly Hughes on June 18, 2022

One of Spring’s brightest harbingers, hyacinths are one of the best spring flowers to add into your garden or to brighten up your home as a potted delight. Popping up between the precocious crocus and the vibrant buds of tulips, hyacinths are not only a great way to bring color and fragrance into your garden, they also work well as a cut flower, brightening up any bouquet.

Related Post: All About Muscari

Order a stunning hyacinth arrangement from FromYouFlowers or SendFlowers to see how this flower can enliven any bouquet!

If you’re looking for a shrub that is easy to care for, will come back year after year, and pack a vibrant colorful punch to your flower beds or containers, look no further than hyacinth. Wondering how to care for hyacinths after planting and take care of its blooms after flowering? This guide will show you how to plant, protect and care for hyacinth plants both outdoors and indoors to keep them healthy and happy for years to come! 

Can’t wait for Spring to come to see some color in your garden? Check out our article on the best cold weather flowers to keep your garden bright and boisterous with some year-round blooms.

How to care for a hyacinth plant

One of the most important things to know when caring for hyacinth plants is that they like the cold. They are most commonly grown in zones 3 to 9 and must be in a climate with temperatures averaging 40° to 45°F for approximately 13 weeks in order to flourish come spring. This means planting hyacinths before the first frost so they can be tucked up in cold soil during the winter or, if growing indoors, taking care to keep your pot and hyacinth bulbs in a garage or other cold space.

If your region isn’t cold enough, you can always keep your bulbs in the fridge before planting them outside. Just make sure there’s no fruit in the fridge as this emits a gas that destroys the flower embryos! 

Refrigerators are actually very handy tools in flower care - find out how they can keep your fresh cut flowers, like a monthly subscription bouquet from EnjoyFlowers, alive for longer here. They can even help your plants survive winter!

More tips for hyacinth care indoors

After being chilled and planted, for the best blue hyacinth indoor care, you can move your container to a location that gets good indirect light once you see sprouting leaves measuring a couple inches in length. When flowers begin to bloom, take care to put your hyacinth in a position of full sun.

For hyacinth shrubs outside, plant them in a place that will get full sun and then watch them thrive once spring comes!

Aside from taking care to get the temperature right, the other thing to consider when caring for hyacinth is watering it correctly. Hyacinth doesn’t care for wet feet and overwatering your plants either outside or inside will have harmful consequences. Take care to keep soil moist during the sprouting stage but then, once flowering begins, only water when the soil is dry at a depth of approximately three inches.

Then get ready to enjoy your blooms! 

Hyacinth after bloom care

Lots of people wonder what to do when hyacinth flowers die – do you just throw them out and replant new ones next year? Or do you give them some post-flowering care to keep these perennials coming back next Spring?

Related Post: How to Bring a Plant Back to Life

The answer is entirely up to you and depends on whether or not you want your hyacinth to bloom again. If you would like a reblooming hyacinth, here’s everything you need to know about both indoor and outdoor hyacinth bulbs’ care to ensure a happy perennial for several springs to come.

Indoor plants

Indoor hyacinths, due to the unnaturalness of their opening, cannot bloom again inside. The only way to save your hyacinth houseplant for another season is to replant it outside. This is also true of muscari.

So, if you’ve wondered, ‘can you plant a hyacinth bulb after it blooms?’ the answer for indoor bulbs is yes, you can!

How to plant a hyacinth bulb after it’s bloomed

When your hyacinth begins to go dormant (when it has finished flowering) remove the blooms from the flower spike. This is to conserve its energy so it will be stronger for reblooming. However, it’s very important you leave the foliage and wait for it to die back – while still alive, the leaves are again doing crucial work to replenish your hyacinth’s energy reserves.

Only once the leaves have shriveled and turned brown can you cut them back. After doing so, you have two choices. You can either dig up the bulbs, removing any damaged ones and cleaning and drying the remaining ones before putting them into storage in a cool, dark, and dry space. You can use paper bags or mesh sacks to store them. Labeling is always a good idea.

Alternatively, you can put the whole pot into storage (once both blooms and foliage have been allowed to die and been cut back) until the fall. Once you don’t water or feed your hyacinth during this time – and ensure it’s in the same conditions as the packaged bulbs – your plant will be primed and energized for replanting outdoors.

Once fall comes around, simply replant your potted or packaged bulbs as normal in fall for another spring of show stopping beauty!

Outdoors plants

For outdoor hyacinths, the process is similar. Simply wait for your hyacinth to finish flowering before removing the blooms and then do the same for its leaves (taking care to wait until they’ve browned). Your hyacinth should then be able to stay in the ground throughout winter. 

Remember, the best care you can give your hyacinth plant is keeping it cool so if you live in a warmer climate where temperatures won’t dip below 60°F your bulbs will need to be dug up and stored in a cool, dry place.

After this special deadheading care, your hyacinth should have enough energy to rebloom wondrously in the spring!

Hyacinths are a plant that thrive with just a little care and their beautiful pastel shades - particularly their significant blue blossoms - are a true delight to behold. Self-seeding, they’re also a wonderful way to grow your flower beds year on year!

Whether you enjoy them in a cut flower Spring bouquet from MonthlyClubs or in a potted indoor creation from Plants.com, take care to sprinkle your spring with this gorgeous, fragrant plant!