Growing Lantana: A Complete Profile

By Growing Home Greens Team · July 18, 2026

Lantana is a sprawling, heat-tolerant bloomer that only really makes sense in warm zones (8-11), and worth a second look at which specific cultivar you’re buying, since ordinary Lantana camara has a documented invasive track record in mild climates. The flowers come in small, tight clusters that open one color and fade to another, yellow shading to orange or pink fading to white, giving a 2- to 3-foot spreading mound its multicolor look.

Budgeting for a nursery start, not seed

Lantana is essentially nursery-start only in a home garden: seed germination is slow and erratic enough that starting it yourself from seed isn’t practical, so budget for buying transplants instead. Start those transplants indoors about 10 weeks before your last frost if you’re growing your own from purchased plugs, or set nursery starts out about 2 weeks after that date. It reaches flowering size in around 90 days and needs room, its mounding, trailing habit spreads about 3 feet wide, but it’s budgeted at only 0.15 plants per square foot (roughly 7 square feet per plant) to account for that spread. It’s a true perennial hardy to about 28°F, but grown as an annual outside zones 8-11.

Weak flowering is a sun problem

Leggy, sparse plants with weak flowering are usually a sun problem. Lantana wants full, hot sun and underperforms in shade or in cooler climates outside its comfort zone. In warm-winter regions, an unchecked planting can seed itself into surrounding wild areas; if that’s a concern where you garden, a sterile cultivar sidesteps the issue without giving up the flower.

A long-season butterfly draw that needs its own space

Lantana’s clustered flowers are a strong, long-season draw for butterflies and other pollinators working the vegetable beds nearby. See the full companion guide for lantana. Its wide sprawl means it needs dedicated room in the Garden Designer rather than being squeezed in as a border accent. Plan for its mature spread, not its transplant size.

Companion planting guide for Lantana · Find your planting dates

Typically viable in USDA zones 3-11. Not sure your zone? Look it up by ZIP code.

Method: Buy as a start: Buy as a nursery start and transplant outside. Lantana is slow or unreliable from seed, so most gardeners skip seed-starting it entirely.

See exact start-indoors, direct-sow, and harvest dates for your zone →

How many Lantana plants fit per square foot?

Spacing: about 7 square feet per plant (square-foot-gardening spacing). Mature height: 1-2 ft.

Varieties worth considering

• 'Bloomify' series (e.g. 'Bloomify Red', 'Bloomify Rose'): UF/IFAS Gardening Solutions recommends sterile Lantana camara cultivars like the 'Bloomify' series over invasive seed-producing types, noting sterile varieties put more energy into flowering since they aren't spending it on seed production, a meaningfully different pick for zone 8-11 gardeners, since ordinary lantana is a documented invasive in warm climates. (source)
• 'New Gold': Clemson HGIC describes this as sterile and heavy-blooming with deep gold flowers, on a smaller 2 foot tall by 4 foot wide habit than Miss Huff below. Reliably hardy on the coast per Clemson, but a milder-winter pick than Miss Huff for colder parts of its range. (source)
• 'Miss Huff': Also sterile per Clemson, but a much larger plant, 5-6 feet in a single season, in a mix of orange, coral and gold. Clemson calls it one of the most reliably perennial lantanas even in the cooler Upstate, the pick if winter hardiness matters more than a compact size. (source)

Cited from the source shown next to each variety. We haven't grown these ourselves yet, so treat this as a research-backed starting point, not a personal endorsement.

Where to buy lantana starts

Lantana is almost always bought as a nursery start rather than seeded. Check a local nursery or garden center; we haven't vetted online start/plant suppliers yet.

See it growing

Search YouTube for "growing lantana" videos → (a live search, not a hand-picked video; results vary and aren't vetted by us)

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Growing Lantana: A heat-loving, nursery-start-only bloomer worth choosing a sterile cultivar of if you garden where it can escape into the wild.

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