Gardening: Indoors & Out
Subtle Beauty: Designing the Winter Landscape

When Christina Mackaulin gives workshops on winter gardening, she always mentions one suggestion she got from a well known gardener:  Don’t cut back your perennials.  Then, at the height of winter, take spray paint, go out and spray paint your garden back to life.  … 

It’s good to have a back up plan like that.  But for those who want a less flamboyant and more reliable approach, there are still ways to delight in your garden or yard even when the snow is piled high.  Toward that end, we talked with Mackaulin from North Ferrisburgh, as well as Paul Sokol, co-owner with wife Louise Giovanella of Addison Gardens.

This is the time of year to walk your plot or yard and begin to plan for next year.  Texture and color, shape, line and contrast, movement and stillness -- these are the elements of beauty that can be achieved in the winter garden.

Choosing the Right Plants:  The key is plant selection, according to Mackaulin.  “Ornamental grasses are really popular," she suggests.  "Especially in the Northeast."

Sokol agrees.  “We use grasses a lot.  They can grow 4, 5, 6 feet, and they tend to stand up, even with a moderate amount of snow."  Sokol suggests looking for plants like these with “stature."  Even the common perennials known as brown-eyed susans will grow to 24"-30”.  They retain their brown seed pods which look lovely dotted with snow.

Persistent Color:  Plant with berries, says Mackaulin.  Crabapples, hawthorn and the hollies, like winterberry, will provide color and variety.  In addition, these plants will bring the colorful winter birds-life, beauty and activity in the dead of winter.  “I also like to leave my sunflowers up.  The birds come and they have a nice platform to stand on,” says Mackaulin

Barking Up the Right Tree:  We all tend to think of trees primarily for their flowers of foliage.  Yet, many trees have colorful or textured bark which stands out in winter.  Both red and yellow dogwood, clethra, cherry, the birches and the bronze cornuis maachii bring visual abundance to the scene outside your window.  “When you set out to improve your winter landscape, you need to know what you’re looking for, why something would be interesting….even brown can be beautiful -- the russets, that ambery-mustard of the grasses.  Up here in the North, we have to learn to appreciate what we can get,” says Sokol, who is a wholesale perennial grower.

Evergreens:  Use small ornamental evergreens, advises Mackaulin.  She suggests the dwarf pines, dwarf firs and dwarf spruces as well as false cypress.  Sokol adds weeping hemlock and weeping white pine to the list of these delicate trees with complex outlines and deep green needles.  These trees also bear cones, which are not only lovely ornaments, but also attract birds. 

Structure & Sculpture:  Adding structural elements like benches or sculpture to your garden can also help to keep visual interest year round, suggests Mackaulin.  She does warn, however, that many of the stone pieces will need to come inside in the winter.  But copper, for instance, can stay outside year round

Finding Out More:  “If you want the pleasure of discovery, don’t clean up your perennial garden.  Then see what happens, which plants stand up, which plants look good,” says Sokol.  Such 'experiments' can help since, for the most part, knowledge is power when it comes to winter gardening.

“What makes these things happen is your specific knowledge,” he says.  Two almost identical varieties of perennial can respond very differently to cold and snow.  Sokol recommends asking at the local garden centers or contacting the Vermont Association of Professional Horticulturists in Williston to get names of Vermont certified horticulturists.  The University of Vermont also offers a Q & A service as part of their Master Gardeners Program http://pss.uvm.edu/mg/mg/

Can anyone say that the late afternoon sun shining through the translucent gold pods of the maple are less magnificent than a cluster of daffodils in bloom? Or the cardinal perched on a sumac branch less striking than the poppy? Reshaping your winter landscape can reshape your perception of winter.

After all, as Sokol says, “It’s the simple pleasures.”  And gardening with winter in mind can easily add to yours.

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