By Ben Stickland, Seasonal Gardener at The Gardens on Spring Creek
‘Tis the season for … waiting for the spring. Maybe gardeners are particularly susceptible to seasonal affective disorder (or maybe it’s just boredom), but if you are anything like me, you are already itching to see the first signs of spring bulbs.
Alas, we still have a few long, cold months to go. But something we often forget is that the wintertime provides a special opportunity: as plants go dormant, bloom color no longer matters, and many gardeners find themselves more in tune with the textures and shapes of the garden. So, I dare you, dear reader, to go outside and look at your garden in the dead of winter. Do you like what you see? If not, much can be done to make your wintertime garden something special. Here are some tips that will stave off those winter blues and make your garden a standout even during the dreariest months of the year.
Some low-hanging fruit, if you’ll excuse the pun, are fruits! A pop of color from the large, red hips of rugosa rose (Rosa rugosa) or a well-placed cockspur hawthorn (Crataegus crus-galii), bearing persistent, waxy-red fruits, will stand out against snow or dormant perennials, turning unexpected plants into centerpieces. Being strategic with where you put plants that hold onto their fruits can make a dormant garden feel more intentional, and when they are front and center, it allows the garden to decorate itself for the holiday, so you don’t have to.
Evergreens will also take the spotlight in the winter. During the summer, evergreens have a tendency to blend into the background in favor of colorful displays or interesting broadleaf trees. But in the winter, you will begin to notice the subtle differences in the color and texture of your conifers. This is an opportunity to reexamine and be intentional with color combinations when it’s easiest to see which plants are doing the real legwork. Try experimenting with a blue spruce (Picea pungens) next to a vibrant redtwig dogwood (Cornus sericea), or play an olive-green single-needle pinyon (Pinus edulis) off the dramatic orange hips of a red-leaf rose (Rosa glauca). Conifers also provide forms and textures that give a sense of structure to gardens otherwise dominated by winter-thin deciduous and herbaceous plants that have taken their winter holiday.
And once many of the trees and shrubs in the garden are bare, you may also begin to notice the slight differences in color and texture of the bark and the stems of each of your now-dormant woody plants. A tree with an interesting bark color can make a real difference in a color scheme: a white-barked aspen (Populus tremuloides) will brighten a vignette while a crabapple’s (Malus spp.) multicolored bark will shine against more neutral colors.
Herbaceous plants still have something to offer, too. Gardeners are often quick to cut back anything and everything brown in the fall. However, many of our garden favorites will stay interesting long after they finish blooming. Seed heads on purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and Eastern red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) or spent flowers on smooth hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens) will hold up well even after the color drains, providing structures and forms that will stand out against your evergreens or naked shrubs. A well-placed purple coneflower will draw the eye with upright, round seed heads, especially if paired with the fine wispy texture of an ornamental grass.
Speaking of which, although ornamental grasses may not be terribly eye-catching in the summer, they undeniably earn their keep in the winter. Grasses are stellar at providing necessary texture to the garden; their seed heads and blades will typically stick around long into the winter months, gently swaying in the breeze or glowing with an overnight frost. Since subtle differences in color will also stand out more in the winter, playing grasses with different colors and textures off each other will add even more allure. Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) and its cousin little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) will turn a nice orangey-purple, ruby muhly (Muhlenbergia reverchonii) will maintain its wispy texture, and blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) or northern sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) will hold onto its seed heads. These small differences will begin to really stand out in the colder months of the year and will make the garden feel more intricate and compelling.
It is unfortunately very easy to ignore the garden and let it fallow while waiting until the spring. But by doing so, we are robbing ourselves of a fascinating world of design. By braving the cold and being just a little more thoughtful with our planting and pruning habits, the winter in the garden can be just as beautiful as any other time of year.
