Beautiful Winter Garden Ideas
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Most gardeners who plant and enjoy their gardens during the spring, summer, and fall, have a certain dread for the wintertime, and the effects that cold weather, and even snow, will have on the overall beauty of their gardens. For lack of a better description, everything just looks drab and dead during the winter. Fortunately, if you know what to plant, you will find that you can have a beautiful garden during all four seasons of the year, including the winter.
First, think about grasses and evergreens for your winter garden. These will provide the perfect backdrop for what comes next. Make sure that you plant grasses and evergreens that are designed to either blossom in the winter, or at the very least to hold up and not die when cold weather arrives.
While there are no flowers that fare well in the winter, other than poinsettias which don’t last very long, you may want to seriously consider adding color to your garden, to work against your green backdrop, in the form of various berries. There are a huge variety of colors available when it comes to berries, and you can literally fill your garden space up with beauty and color.
If you want red colors, select an American Holly Bush or the American Cranberry Bush. Both of these will produce beautiful red berries during the winter, and will produce gorgeous white flowers during the spring. While you want a good selection of greenery and other color for your winter garden, you must carefully consider what the plant will produce during other times of the year as well.
For example, other options for red winter berries include the Cranberry Cotoneaster, the Tea Viburnum, Winter King Hawthorne, and the Winterberry. The Cranberry Cotoneaster produces small pink flowers in the spring, the Tea Viburnum produces small white flowers in the spring, the Winter King Hawthorne will produce white flower clusters during the spring, and the winterberry berries will all be eaten up by the birds long before winter is over.
While red is a popular winter color, it isn’t the only color that you can add to your garden in the form of berries. The Arrow Wood produces berries that are such a dark blue that they almost appear black. This plant also produces white flowers in the spring. If a color that is more of a purple/black, instead of a blue/black is preferred, you can plant Black Chokeberry. Another darker colored berry is the Coralberry, which is also known as Indian Currant.
If you want lighter colored berries in your garden, you should note that some varieties of the above plants will produce yellow berries. You should also consider lighter blues, such as the Eastern Red Cedar or the Northern Bayberry.
Of course, with all of that vibrant color, you will want to offset some of it with a splash of white. This can be achieved with the Common Snowberry. Plan the Snowberry plants sporadically throughout the other various colored plants for the right effect. Because the berries probably won’t yet have bloomed when you set the plants, you will most likely have to use your imagination to realize what the completed, blooming garden will look like in the cold winter months.
You may, of course, want to add more than greenery and berries to your winter garden as well. You might consider winter fruits and those flowering plants that are meant for spring, but also look beautiful in the winter. If you live in a particularly cold area, you might want to consider how much time you will need to spend outdoors, in your garden, tending to your winter plants as well.
