Flowers are wonderful, of course, but it is the structure or “the bones” of the garden that really make a garden design work, through all the seasons. My suggestion, for a new garden or even a garden renovation, is to plan your space with a good number of evergreens to “hold” the design of your gardens, all through the winter months. Even in January and February, I have form and colour in each of my gardens by using both conifers and broadleaf evergreens. As I have mentioned before, the beautiful Bergenia always adds colour, as a focus, at a time when most gardens can be very bleak.
Not only do evergreens add much-needed colour, but they really stand out as the “bones” of the whole garden design. One exception that is not evergreen, but so worth growing, would be winter- flowering Hamamelis. It blooms in January and February and has a most intoxicating fragrance that wafts across the entire yard! This Hamamelis, below, grows near our side gate..
The “Garden Glimpse”, below, shows a part of my garden in January/February of this year, illustrating how the evergreens define the design.
I am also very much a fan of large rocks in a garden, especially if they have been properly “planted”.
( My Gardening Tip: Do not leave the rocks on the surface, looking as if some giant must have just dropped them! They need to either be dug in a bit, or even better, add more soil and build up the entire garden around them.) Below, you see the large boulder on my front pathway supported, visually, by the Bergenia which has turned a deep burgundy and by smaller, evergreen Cryptomeria.
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And, in yet another garden, large and very thick Basalt stepping stones have been placed throughout, in order to facilitate grooming and weeding in this large and mostly evergreen, garden space.
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Even my very large planters have some evergreen material which is a great foil for the seasonal flowers. These can be either perennials, as these Hellebores are, or annuals which I always add in the spring, summer and autumn. In this photo, below, the interest is the red Ilex berries, which have now been mostly eaten by hungry birds, and the pussy willow branches which are now opening up, full and very fluffy. Both of these I added well before Christmas to be a focus throughout the winter. And now, in early February, the Hellebore buds, also, are beginning to show. They will continue to unfold and bloom well into May and June.
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If you would like to see more photos of my gardens , as well as Gardening Tips, go to my Blog, at www.greengardeningtips.net
Next article we’ll look at the “stars” of the Winter garden....the Hellebores!
Cheers and Happy Gardening!
Susan Wheeler.
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