Phenology is the occurrence time of plant growth and development events formed in the process of long-term adaptation to the environment. The long-term phenological observation data showed that the spring phenophases of trees, shrubs, and herbs advanced by 2 to 10 days per decade over the past 50 years, affected by temperature rises, precipitation, and radiation changes. However, the mechanism of plant phenology in response to climatic factors is still unclear, leading to greater uncertainty in predicting plant phenological changes under future climate change scenarios. In this context, the controlled experiments have become an important way to explore the mechanism of climatic factors affecting plant phenology. This study summarized firstly the control methods of different climatic factors (temperature, moisture, light, etc.) in the phenological experiments. Second, we summarized the critical conclusions of the controlled experiments about the response of plant phenology to climatic factors so far and found that the spring phenophases of plants (leaf-out, flowering, etc.) were mainly affected by chilling, forcing temperature and photoperiod, and the autumn phenophases (leaf coloring and fall) were mainly driven by low temperature, short daylength, and water stress. Finally, the study proposed that future controlled experiments should focus on determining the time for woody plants to enter dormancy in autumn, quantifying the interaction of low temperature and short daylength on autumn phenophase of woody plants, and identifying influencing factors for spring and autumn phenophases of herbaceous plants.