Gardening can be a four-season delight if you plan your landscape to include plants that add something to a dormant garden. This is especially true for areas where snow and ice dominate the winter.
What Is Seasonal Interest?
Most people who garden are familiar with choosing a range of plants that flower so there is something showy and full of flowers from early spring to the first hard freeze. Seasonal interest means choosing plants that will be interesting in the winter, even if the landscape is dormant.
Keeping Things Interesting
Seasonal interest means adding shape, color, and texture to the landscape. For example, an evergreen like American Holly will stand out against the snow and create seasonal interest in winter.
Colorful Foliage
Many herbatious perennials have colorful foliage even in the winter. Some perennials are evergreen, such as running cedar. This perennial is actually a clubmoss and is a relative to ferns. Running cedar grows about 5-10 inches tall and thrives as a ground cover in shade, so is often planted in a woodland garden. Many deciduous trees have colorful fall foliage, such as the sugar maple. Sweet Bay Magnolias are evergreens with broad, dark green leaves and creamy white blooms. The flowers have a wonderful fragrance. Sweet bay magnolias grow in swamps and open woodlands. It grows 10-35 feet tall.
Persistent Seed Heads
Some plants hold on to their seedheads during the winter. False indigo has large pea like seedpods that rattle in the wind. Purple coneflower stems and seedheads last all winter, too. Ornamental grasses often retain their seedheads and foliage all winter. Another plant with persistent seedheads is the goldenrod. The yellow flowers are spectacular in the spring and summer, while the seedheads feed birds and small mammals into the winter.
Interesting Forms
Some plants may not have any foliage but have interesting forms. Witch hazel blooms in the late fall or winter and the branches and flowers are interesting to look at. The foliage turns yellow, orange, and red in the fall before falling off. The yellow flowers stay on the tree after the foliage falls.
Persistent Berries And Fruit
Plants that have persistent berries give wildlife crucial calories during the cold of winter. Elderberries keep their berries during the winter. They can grow to 12 feet tall and have clusters of berries. The berries are edible and are often used to make jams, jelly, and wine.
Red chokeberry also keeps its berries all winter. It has white blooms in the spring and red berries in the fall that persist into the winter. Red chokeberry plants grow to be up to 12 feet tall. The dark green, glossy leaves turn a rich orange-red in the fall before falling off. The bark comes off in strips during the winter and adds interest to the chokeberry.
Persimmon trees have fruit late into the fall and winter. In fact, persimmons are so tart as to be inedible until after a frost, when they turn sweet and good to eat. Deer love ripe persimmons. Persimmon trees are often found on the edges of old fields, where they grow to about 15 feet tall. In moist, rich soil, they can grow to be 100 feet tall.
Grasses And Sedges
Grasses and sedges add interesting textures to a winter garden. Some have seedheads that persist into the winter, as well. Purple love grass grows 8-18 inches tall. In late summer, purple inflorescence grows on top of the grass. It appears like a purple cloud above the foliage. Eventually, this breaks off and forms purple tumbleweeds.
Pennsylvania sedge is a grass-like clumping plant with a triangular stem. A brown seedhead forms high up on the stem. In the spring and summer, the foliage is green. In the fall, it turns a sandy brown. It grows 6-12 inches tall and is a nice groundcover.
Interesting Bark
Birches like river birch have bark that peels off during the winter. This tree grows to 30-50 feet in moist areas. The silvery white bark peels in the winter to reveal cinnamon colored bark underneath.
Red Osier Dogwood has conspicuous red twigs that really show up against snow. This shrub grows 6-12 feet tall. Creamy white blossoms are followed by white berries. The green foliage is colorful in the fall before falling off and showing off the red bark.
We Can Help
TN Nursery staff can recommend many native plants that add winter interest to your garden. Call us at 931.692.7325 to get the information you need to plan your garden for all four seasons.
