CABOT – The winter garden is an underrated joy. Even in the deepest part of winter, a garden can be full of interest and beauty, full of different heights and textures and colors. If you would like to enjoy your garden year-round, the key is to incorporate trees, shrubs, and stemmy perennials.
These plants will stand tall above the snow, providing birds with seeds and fruit and perching places, and giving you something to look at while the rest of the world is blanketed in white.
It does take some advance planning. Annuals like marigold and petunias turn to mush by October, as do
perennials with tender leaves, such as hosta, daylily, iris and peony. And if you cut back all your tall, stemmy plants in fall, it will be late spring before you see them again. To have a garden with win-
ter interest, think about a combination of the following plants, and leave your stemmy perennials standing.
There are a number of trees small enough to be used in a garden. When browsing the nursery catalog, look for dwarf or weeping as an indicator that it’s a small form tree. And always check mature height and spread before choosing a tree, to make sure it won’t over whelm and outgrow the space. There are
weeping cherry, crabapple and birch varieties that stay very petite and have a lovely form when the leaves drop. There are even dwarf and weeping Norway spruce, which will have really interesting
shapes and stay green year-round.
There are many delightful small shrubs suitable for gardens. As with trees, check the mature height and
spread before planting any shrub. Red twig dogwood is a native shrub that rarely exceeds four feet and has brilliant red stems throughout winter. Winterberry, another native, holds onto bright red berries till the birds finally decide they are worth eating in late winter. Hydrangeas hold their spent dried flower
heads, sometimes right up till their next blooming in late summer. There are many junipers and cedars that stay small and can provide a splash of green or gold. If you are looking for a true oddity, try the
corkscrew hazel, also called Henry Lauder’s Walking Stick, with wildly cork-screwing branches that really stand out when the leaves drop.
There is a long list of perennials that have tall, cellulose-rich stems: coneflower, bee balm, aster, goldenrod, black-eyed Susan, goatsbeard and phlox, to name some of the more common native plants.
If not cut back in fall, these stems can stand right through to spring. These plants can be a winter seed source for birds and small mammals, and the stems can house stem-nesting bees. There are also non-native plants that, while having less wildlife value, still have great visual appeal, such as Autumn Joy sedum and astilbe.
Have a beautiful winter, and if you don’t have a winter garden now, start thinking about one for next year.
Susan Socks, the Garden Goddess, is available at [email protected] or (802) 498.7785, or visit SocksFamilyFarm.weebly.com. This article first appeared in the January issues of the Cabot Chronicle.
