Growing Winter Savory: A Complete Profile
By Growing Home Greens Team · August 10, 2026
Winter savory is the perennial half of the savory family, a low, woody-based plant with a sharper, more resinous flavor than annual summer savory. The trade for that stronger flavor is a plant that survives winter outdoors in zones 4-8, coming back on its own rather than needing to be sown fresh every spring.
Starting it
Start indoors 6 to 8 weeks before your last frost, tamping seed lightly into the mix or sowing it shallowly, since light helps germination. Transplant once seedlings have four true leaves, setting them out after the last frost. Germination takes 7 to 14 days. Space plants 8 inches apart in rows 12 to 18 inches apart; mature plants stay compact at 6 to 12 inches tall.
Cut back in fall, pinch in spring
Because it’s a perennial, winter savory benefits from a cutback in fall and pinching new growth in spring, which keeps it full and bushy rather than woody and sparse over the years. Leaf harvest can start once plants reach about 6 inches tall; flowers, if you’re after them, begin blooming roughly 90 days after planting.
Drying and storage
For a fall harvest meant for drying, cut plants near ground level and dry them away from direct sunlight before stripping the leaves from the now-woody stems. Established plants can also be propagated by root division in fall or spring, a faster route to more plants than starting again from seed.
Winter savory has no recorded companions or antagonists in our data. See the full companion guide for winter savory for how it’s tracked. As a genuine perennial, give it a permanent spot in the Garden Designer rather than planning to rotate it out each season.
Source: Winter Savory: Key Growing Information, Johnny’s Selected Seeds.
Companion planting guide for Winter Savory · Find your planting dates
Typically viable in USDA zones 4-8. Not sure your zone? Look it up by ZIP code.
Method: Start indoors: Start indoors from seed, then transplant outside. Winter Savory needs a head start most zones can't give it by direct-sowing alone.
See exact start-indoors, direct-sow, and harvest dates for your zone →
How many Winter Savory plants fit per square foot?
Spacing: 4 per square foot (square-foot-gardening spacing). Mature height: 0.5-1 ft.
Varieties worth considering
- Straight-species winter savory (Satureja montana): Johnny's Selected Seeds sells it as the plain species; there's no real named-cultivar market. The species itself is the point, a different, hardier plant from annual summer savory, not two names for the same herb. (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 winter savory seeds
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Some links on this page also go to other retailers we may earn a commission from as an affiliate, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend products with a genuine consensus of positive, independent reviews. See the sources cited on each item.
See it growing
Search YouTube for "growing winter savory" videos → (a live search, not a hand-picked video; results vary and aren't vetted by us)
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Growing Winter Savory: The perennial half of the savory family, sharper and woodier than summer savory, and it survives outdoors instead of needing to be resown every year.
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