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Color in the Winter Garden
| Article
# : |
19561 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1991 |
1,136 Words |
| Author
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Virginia Greiner
Virginia Greiner writes a weekly gardening column for the
Washington Times. |
In winter can be heard the quiet voice of beauty. Nature sharpens the senses, the air is clearer, the snow intensifies every contrast. The sun, riding low in the sky, casts long, dramatic shadows over sleeping lawns. Trees display intricate branching patterns that are hidden under leaves in warmer months. Even the moon and the ice conspire on long winter nights to produce shimmering landscapes that have their own quiet beauty.
But the real frosting on the winter landscape is color.
Spring, summer, and fall gardens offer a feast of color until the first deep frosts turn the landscapes black and white or brown and blah. But many trees, shrubs, and plants offer colorful bark, seedpods, foliage, and winter blooms to enliven the view. Man-made elements such as statues, walks, fences, pools, and trelliswork also add pattern and color to the scene.
Sometimes winter color is as subtle as the pattern of a tree's cinnamon-toned branches against a pale pink February sunset. Other trees offer bark that peels to reveal soft pastel under layers. A few trees and shrubs add intense jots of color--the coral bark Japanese maple makes an orange-red streak of color, and the stems of the Siberian dogwood turn a brilliant red in the winter sun.
Winter's subdued landscapes also tend to show off the astonishing variety of color that evergreens have to offer--inky green yews, steely blue spruces, blue gray and golden yellow cypresses, bronze arborvitae, willow-green kerria japonica, shiny blue-green hollies.
Evergreen colors show up best if they are used in immediate contrast to each other. One of the prettiest sights on a winter day is a tapestry hedge, which combines shrubs of different colors and textures such as golden privet, variegated holly, tawny beech, and crimson barberry to form ribbons of softly undulating color.
Berries and Pods
There are few flowers in the winter garden, but nature supplies substitutes like berries, pods, and marbled or spotted foliage.
Experienced gardeners often don't cut back perennials such as black-eyed Susans, purple coneflowers, and sedums in the fall but leave the stems and dark seed heads to dance in the wind until the next spring.
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