Stripped of its lush spring and summer growth, the winter garden nonetheless has a charm of its own, especially when it is covered in snow. It is all about contours and shapes and the way the ice and snow transform items and add sparkle.
Flowers in the deep winter are restricted to the Christmas and Lenten roses. The Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, has greenish white flowers, and the Lenten rose Helleborus orientalis, has so many hybrids that there are flowers that are white, cream, pink, green, purple, and almost black.
The flowers are downward nodding and can be single or double, and the blooms appear from mid-winter to mid-spring. The snowdrops, Galanthus nevalis, come next, and they like growing under trees and shrubs and multiply fast. They can be taken indoors in small vases.
In January and February, bright yellow aconite flowers carpet the ground, and if one is patient over time, it spreads and carpets large swathes of the garden. Winter crocus also naturalize well. A few shrubs bloom early, also. Viburnum ‘Dawn’ has scented pink flowers, and the scrambling winter jasmine has yellow blooms.
And, of course, there are red berries that gleam in the winter garden. Hollies, hawthorns, and cotoneasters have berries that the birds love.
Plant lots of early-blooming little bulbs, as well as some early dwarf iris to provide late winter bloom.
This is Moya Andrews, and today we focused on the winter garden.
