Liven up your winter landscape

Flower & Garden Magazine, Feb-March, 1995 by Margaret Haapoja

As Winter Steals Across the North Country, color disappears from the scene. Trees and snow-shrouded shrubbery fade into neutral tones. Especially in the Northern climes, gardening becomes a spectator sport, a time for contemplation. Gardeners gaze out across the lawn longing for signs of life. They sit close to the fire studying seed catalogs and planning for the season.

But winter should not be a season of discontent. On the contrary, February is the perfect month to evaluate your landscape. The garden in winter need not be bleak, empty and lifeless. Nature provides many plants that make a winter landscape picturesque. Winter lays bare a garden's bones, revealing interesting shapes and textures, emphasizing subtle touches of color. Even in my northern Minnesota garden, where winter spreads a blanket of snow and ice that lasts six months, patterns of interlacing, snow-laden branches, richly textured evergreens and bright winter berries delight the eye. Winter's special effects enhance every growing thing. Spare outlines of skeletal branches trace patterns against a bright blue sky. Thick frost coating each twig sparkles in the cold dawn sunlight.

With much of the garden's herbaceous material hidden from sight, any focal point in the landscape quickly catches the eye. A carefully chosen clump of ornamental grass lighted at night or a garden sculpture can complete the picture Walls and fences develop greater visual importance as the vines and vegetation screening them disappear. Hedges of boxwood or screens of cedar make a stronger statement in winter. Such dividers do double duty, creating microclimates favorable to less hardy plants and protecting houses from icy blasts and sky-high heating bills.

FIND FORM

Winter is the season of silhouettes. Think evergreens - perfectly shaped spruces, sprawling junipers, feathery cedars. Imagine the gnarled outline of an ancient oak or the symmetrical shape of a sugar maple against the sky at sunset. Stripped of foliage, deciduous trees and shrubs stand naked, showing every bend, bump and line. Snowfall serves as a foil to heighten their beauty of form. Sitting at our dining room table, I admire the snow-frosted branches of a mugho pine. Native pagoda dogwood displays wonderful horizontal branch structure and has the added advantage of white flowers in June and late-summer bunches of blue berries for the birds. Pendulous seed pods transform a catalpa tree into a living chandelier.

Mike Heger, owner of Ambergate Gardens Nursery in Waconia, Minnesota, is a real fan of ornamental grasses. "When you live in a climate where you've got about six months of winter," he says, "you'd better start looking at plants that can add interest to the landscape from August well into the winter months." Among Heger's favorite grasses used as season extenders are the Miscanthus cultivars, including `Silver Feather' (or `Silberfeder'), a tall grass with showy silver plumes that hold up well through the winter. Miscanthus sinensis `Purpurascens' looks like it's on fire when the light streams through the burnt orange foliage. In more southern locations, Heger suggests Erianthus ravennae, a Mediterranean plume grass that grows to 12 feet and has ornamental seed heads that resist shattering. Helictotrichon sempervirens, or blue oat grass, grows in symmetrical 2-foot hummocks of fine textured, spiked bluish leaves.

Deciduous trees and shrubs form the framework of the garden. They often reveal their character more plainly in winter, when their particular pattern of trunks and branches is projected against a backdrop of white. Weeping trees and shrubs emphasize line in the landscape. Siberian pea shrub (Caragana arborescens pendula) or weeping willow (Salix alba tristis) lend a leisurely look to the landscape.

Landscape designer Harry Hutchins is especially fond of witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) for its twiggy growth and nutlets that hang on all winter. Native to eastern North America, witch hazel has deep golden fall foliage and displays spidery yellow flowers with honey-apricot fragrance in October. Along with some native oaks and ironwoods, witch hazel retains its leaves well into the winter, resulting in a pleasant rustling sound when you walk by.

Outdoor architecture also adds visual interest. Consider the framework of your yard - paths, walls, fences, hedges and edging. Is there a focal point such as a bench, arbor, trellis or birdbath? Capitalize on the ability of structures to draw attention by adding plants to complement them.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF

TEXTURE

Texture piques our interest in the winter garden. Everything from the crinkled leaves of ironwood (Ostrya virginiana) to the prickly needles of Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris) to the shaggy bark of eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) invite our touch. Creamy, curling bark of birches - either Betula papyrifera or Betula nigra - combines well with dark green conifers.

Evergreens add texture, color and mass. Covered with snow, conifers suggest Christmas-card beauty. The Japanese call evergreens "snow flowers" since they appear to bloom in winter, with tufts of snow on the tips of each branch. Green needles of juniper, arborvitae and yew soften the appearance of concrete walls, brick buildings and cold parking lots.