How To Plant & grow Paperwhites – The Perfect Flowering Houseplant

Paperwhites are an excellent choice for indoor flowers, especially over winter and early spring when there is little else flowering.

What’s more, they are also effortless to grow; let me show you how…

Growing Paperwhites In Gravel

Luckily for us, these flowers are not fussy, they will happily grow in water alone and do not require any nutrition to flower.

In this section, I will show you how to plant paperwhites into gravel for a gorgeous indoor display without having to use any soil.

You can grow paperwhites in anything; they aren’t fussy at all. I used a glass vase – the only thing I would change here is to use one a little wider so that I can fit more bulbs in!

These bulbs only require water to grow and flower for a year, so you can use many different mediums to grow your paperwhites.

I decided to use these leca clay balls.

I filled the vase up to roughly 3 inches with clay balls.

I then packed my bulbs in. I packed them tightly and got as many as I possibly could in a single row.

You then want to fill your vase with water, just up to the base of the bulb.

You don’t want to cover the bulbs with water as they will rot, but you do want the water to just touch the bulb’s base to stimulate root development.

Growing Paperwhites In Soil

Paperwhites will also happily grow in a pot with some compost, here’s how to plant them up.

Any pot will do, but a shallow and wide pot is best. I didn’t have one of those, so I’m making do with what I’ve got!

A shallow pot works best because your paperwhites don’t actually need the nutrition in your potting soil to grow, so you are just wasting money the more soil you use.

And the wider the pot, the more bulbs you can pack in!

I didn’t fill my pot all the way to the top with compost, I would say its about 2/3rds full.

Then, simply pack your bulbs in as tightly as possible and water them. Job done. You don’t need to bury the bulbs – they will grow just fine like this.

Give them lots of water initially, and make sure you use a well-draining pot with a saucer, as the bulbs will rot if they get waterlogged.