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ATTLEBORO -- Gardeners and other folks frustrated by winter dormancy can make the bleak cold-weather months brighter with indoor blooms and plants.

Whether it's fragrant herbs, a tropical flowering bulb like an amaryllis, cascading greens or even a cactus, there are plenty of options to get you through to spring and a return to the outdoors.

We tapped several members of the Attleboro Garden Club for their suggestions, and a couple showed us what they grow indoors during the winter.

Sharing suggestions

Kathi Gariepy, who is president of both the Massachusetts Horticultural Society's Master Gardeners and the Attleboro Garden Club, brings her bay and rosemary indoors from her herb garden to flourish during the long winter months. She has a rosemary plant she's been doing that with for eight years. And she retains geraniums from season to season - she has at least one that she's kept going for 12 years. But she also nurtures an abutilon, also known as a "parlor" or "Victorian" maple. Hers has delicate-looking pink blossoms.

"They bloom beautifully in the winter," she said.

Garden Club member Cynthia Horne keeps her green thumb active by swapping out plants, taking some out of the batches under grow lights and mixing them in arrangements with plants that she had outside during the warmer months.

A copper pot, which she said dates back to the days of her infancy and was used to boil her cloth diapers, is now a planter sitting in a sunny spot in her living room. It's filled with a combination of paper whites, which can be nurtured year to year; the common houseplant "wandering Jew" (Horne's has purple variegated leaves); "elephant ear" begonia, with small, light-colored flowers; perilla, a coleus-resembling purple-pink leafed vine; and a fuzzy-looking, green-leafed plectranthus. The elephant ear and begonia go outside for the summer.

Horne always receives the gift of a poinsettia from her husband just before Christmas. While they can be kept going from year to year, she doesn't bother. It takes too much time to balance the amount of sun and darkness the plant needs to bloom.

Gariepy says she just allows hers to remain green-leaved, also choosing not to deal with what can be a finicky plant.

Host of other plants

But there are a host of other plants that can be grown indoors and produce blooms in the winter; anything from African violets to the Dutchman's Pipe, which comes in a variety of blooms as well as, umm, fragrances.

"Some look interesting, some can look scary," Gariepy said of the plants so named because of their pipe-shaped flowers. They can also "smell sweet or like dead meat."

Some can be used as hanging plants. The bowl of the "pipe" contains the liquid that can attract bugs and therefore curious kids, making this a possibly attractive plant to involve them in gardening. A host of carnivorous plants, like Venus Flytraps, can accomplish the same goal, she said, as can the basic Christmas cacti. Sizes range from small and normal, to monstrous - like a cereus. "Think Christmas cactus on steroids," Gariepy said.

She herself has one cactus indoors that blooms all winter. It's in a cooler zone near her back door. Temperature is everything when it comes to nurturing plants indoors, Gariepy said. "Fifty-five degrees is that magic number where things will start growing or chilling." Her cactus prefers the chilly side, while more tropical plants, like the "Victorian" maple, like the warmth.

Streptocarpus plants, which have leaves similar to primroses and "tubular type flowers held on tiny stalks," is another interesting winter plant option. The foliage alone can be interesting.

"They have long strappy leaves, but can still be fuzzy and crinkly," Gariepy said.

And propagation is fairly simple. Take a leaf off the plant, cut it up into four or five sections and plant the sections with the top of the leaf side up in a soil-less, seed-starting mixture. Put a plastic bag over it to retain moisture until it starts to show above the mixture.

Clivias are yet another blooming species. Considered an "aristocratic flower," the blooms can resemble those of small daylilies, Gariepy said. Most people who have them have plants with orange or yellow blossoms, but some newer colors include peach, red and raspberry. Be prepared for sticker shock with the newer varieties, she warned.

Garden club member Linda LeStage has had a clivia for years.

"It has big, dark green foliage. The leaves are like straps," she said. "The blossom emerges from the middle of these straps of green leaves."

The blossoms are clustered and can be as big as 5 inches. Her plant produces them in hues of apricot and orange.

It just hasn't blossomed this season - yet, she said.

SUSAN LaHOUD can be reached at 508-236-0398 or at slahoud@thesunchronicle.com.