Enjoying Your Garden In Winter Part 2

 In my last post, I wrote about identifying the best areas to focus your winter gardens. After all, there's no point in putting lots of beautiful plants out back where you'll never notice them. Now I want to get your brain thinking about all the different things you can add to your landscape to add winter interest. You'd be surprised how many options you have. 

First is the most obvious - evergreens. However, do you realize what a large variety of evergreens there are to work with? You can have a variety of needled plants like pine and spruce or wide leaf evergreens like holly or rhododendrons. Evergreens come in lots of colors too from limey chartreuse green to blue junipers to variegated bushes. You can also get a wide variety of shapes from small, ground hugging plants to enormous hemlocks. You can achieve a lot of interest and variety with evergreens alone. 

That's just the beginning though. Many plants produce colorful berries in winter from bright red winter berry, to blue juniper to purple beauty berry. As a bonus, many birds enjoy these berries and will come to your yard for them too. Pay attention at the garden center when buying plants because many of these plants require a male and female plant to have berries. 

You can also be thinking in terms of plants that

Winter Aconites at Longwood

have lovely bark in winter. Red twig dogwood is very popular for this reason but you can also enjoy white birch trees or some ornamental cherries. 

I am not one for a lot of artificial décor in the garden but in winter, simple pieces of statuary or décor can go a long way. Pots can be filled with cut evergreens all winter. Bird baths can also attract birds when not frozen over. 

Finally, think in terms of bringing Spring early. Plants like hellebore, crocus, winter aconite and witch hazel can bloom as early as February and bring the first taste of spring. Last March I was really impressed with how lovely the outside landscaping looked at Longwood Gardens and there's no reason you can't have some of those plants yourself. 

Is that enough to get your creativity flowing? You too can have a lovely winter garden in your own yard and escape the winter blues. Feel free to share any of your winter growing tips in the comments below.