‍Story also published on Medium.com

There’s a particular kind of silence that settles over a winter garden. The exuberant chaos of summer has retreated, the fiery performance of autumn has taken its final bow, and what remains appears, at first glance, to be absent. Empty branches litter the bare earth, giving the appearance of total death across the landscape.

Look a little closer.

Listen a little harder.

Beneath that stillness, beneath the humus and decay, something is alive; breathing.

Winter dormancy is one of the most sophisticated survival strategies in the natural world, and it might just be the most radical act of regeneration that exists.

What Is Dormancy, Really?

When we talk about plant dormancy, we’re describing a deliberate metabolic slowdown triggered by environmental cues like shorter days, cooling temperatures, and reduced water availability.

During dormancy, plants redirect their energy away from visible growth and toward invisible preparation. Root systems continue to develop slowly in unfrozen soil, while cells concentrate sugars and proteins that act as natural antifreeze, protecting delicate tissues from ice crystal damage. Buds formed months ago sit wrapped in protective scales, holding the blueprints for next year’s leaves and flowers in suspended animation.

Trees like oaks and maples make winter survival a time to prepare for spring with careful evolved precision. Every dormant bud contains a fully formed miniature shoot, complete with embryonic leaves folded origami-tight, waiting for the signal to unfurl.

The Hormonal Intelligence of Rest

Plants don’t experience dormancy passively; rather, they orchestrate it through a sophisticated hormonal communication system that scientists are still working to fully understand.

Abscisic acid (ABA), sometimes called the “stress hormone,” accumulates in plant tissues as days shorten, triggering the cascade of changes that lead to dormancy. This same hormone helps plants respond to drought and other environmental challenges throughout the year. In the wintertime, this hormone tells every cell in the plant to slow down, protect yourself, and wait. It’s time to hibernate.

Plants also track something called “chilling hours”, or the cumulative time spent at temperatures between roughly 32°F and 45°F. Plants are actively counting, measuring, and remembering. Only after they’ve logged enough cold time does another hormone, gibberellin, begin to rise and break dormancy’s hold. This chilling requirement prevents plants from being fooled by a warm spell in January, protecting them from breaking dormancy too early and losing tender new growth to a late frost. The plant is asking: has it been cold long enough? Are we sure winter is really over?

In an era of climate instability, this ancient intelligence faces new challenges. Warmer winters mean some fruit trees aren’t accumulating enough chilling hours, disrupting bloom timing and reducing harvests. If you’ve ever wondered why certain plants like trees or groundcovers may be blooming early or in the middle of winter, this is the result of this intelligence being tested. The careful counting, evolved over millennia, is being thrown off by a rapidly changing world.

Underground Allies

While aboveground portions of plants appear lifeless, the soil beneath them hosts a winter ecosystem of quiet activity.

Mycorrhizal fungi — the vast underground networks that connect plant roots and facilitate nutrient exchange — don’t fully shut down in winter. In forests and gardens alike, these fungal highways continue to move resources between plants, albeit at reduced rates. A dormant tree might still be receiving nutrients from its fungal partners, or even sharing sugars with neighboring plants through this subterranean internet.

Soil microbes continue their work whenever the ground isn’t frozen solid, as they break down autumn’s fallen leaves, recycling nutrients that will feed spring’s growth. Earthworms pull organic matter deeper into the soil profile, improving structure and drainage. The garden that looks empty and barren is actually humming with decomposition and preparation.

Dormancy as Resistance: What Can We Learn From Our Plant Allies?

We live in a culture that valorizes constant productivity, perpetual growth, endless output. The idea that rest could be necessary, that strategic withdrawal is a form of strength rather than weakness, runs counter to nearly every message we receive.

Plants know something that our society has forgotten, and that’s that growth without rest leads to exhaustion and vulnerability. It’s destructive to our ability to create, to cultivate community and interconnection, when we avoid rest. Trees that don’t experience proper dormancy become stressed, more susceptible to disease and pest damage, and less resilient.

So do we.

The dormant period is a phase of the life cycle as important as flowering or fruiting, just as our times of rest allow us to create better and connect more.

When a native perennial dies back to its roots in autumn, it hasn’t given up on itself, but is making an evolutionarily strategic choice to consolidate resources, protect its most vital tissues, and prepare for the explosive growth that spring will demand. This apparent death is truly an investment in its future abundance.

What Dormancy Teaches Us About Regeneration

True regeneration, whether in ecosystems, communities, or individuals, requires cycles of visible activity and invisible restoration.

A forest doesn’t regenerate through constant growth. It regenerates through cycles of disturbance and recovery, activity and rest, death and renewal. The dormant winter is part of the regeneration process, not a pause in it. The soil is being rebuilt, the mycorrhizal networks maintained, the seeds of next year’s wildflowers stratified by cold; their hard coats softened, their chemical inhibitors broken down, preparing them to germinate when conditions are right.

This is true regenerative work. It reminds us that we don’t always need to produce metrics or visible outcomes.

Without it, the whole system collapses.

Embracing the Dormant Season

For gardeners and plant lovers, winter offers an invitation to shift our relationship with productivity and rest.

Instead of viewing the dormant garden as empty or dead, we can learn to see it as a system engaged in its most necessary work. We can resist the urge to tidy up every fallen leaf and dead stalk, recognizing that those materials provide habitat for overwintering beneficial insects and food for the soil food web. We can trust that the plants know what they’re doing, even when we can’t see it.

Native plants are particularly well-adapted to the dormancy rhythms of their home regions. A purple coneflower native to the eastern United States has evolved over thousands of years to enter and exit dormancy in sync with local conditions. Its seeds require cold stratification to germinate. Its crown knows how to protect itself through frozen months. When we plant natives and let them follow their natural cycles, we’re participating in regeneration refined over evolutionary time.

The Radical Act of Waiting

The most radical thing about dormancy is that it requires trust.

The plant can’t see spring coming, can’t check a calendar or consult a weather forecast. It has only its hormonal intelligence, its evolutionary memory, its accumulated chilling hours.

It knows when to stop growing, to conserve energy, to protect what matters most. To trust that the conditions for growth will return.

In a world that constantly urges us toward motion, noise, and visible achievement, there’s something revolutionary about the dormant garden. It offers proof that stillness can be generative. That rest can be productive, and that sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is stop, go inward, and prepare for what’s coming.

Perhaps we can learn this from the plants.

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