We’ve got great news! We’re adding a new writer to the My Green Lake ranks. Please extend a warm welcome to Erica Grivas, a.k.a. The Streetwise Gardener, who will be sharing her extensive gardening and landscaping knowledge with her Green Lake neighbors. Thank you Erica!
Erica is kicking off with this excellent piece about designing your Green Lake garden for winter interest. Enjoy!
The Streetwise Gardener: Got Bones?
Winter is the ultimate test of your garden design. Stripped of its warm-weather veil of colorful blooms, your garden’s naked ground and withered stems are thrust center stage – a look which tends to say more “apocalypse” than “oasis”. Hopefully you have avoided this by cleverly including some plants with winter interest, to keep up the garden during this foliage-challenged time of year. Designers call this building in the “bones” of the garden.
I attempted to do just that with my brand new border this season. I smiled with secret smugness as I planted three Helictotrichon sempervirens (Blue Oat Grass) and three Molina caerulea (Moor Grass- one named “Autumn’s Smouldering Embers” or some such thing) in my border, envisioning the lushly textured winter view. No such luck. Today the Blue Oat Grass looks fabulous, if slightly faded, but leaves as staunch as soldiers, whereas the Molina is… flat as an unwashed toupée. I just fell in love with the nursery tag description and failed to ask how the foliage stands up in winter.
Blue Oat Grass (Helictotrichon sempervirens) looking fluffy in the author’s garden backed by ever-reliable Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’.
True, appreciating winter interest takes a bit of attitude adjustment. It’s about celebrating the little things, small visions of beauty left in summer’s wake, admiring a weeping maple’s sinuous curves, the tortoiseshell bark of a madrona tree, or petting the feathery foliage of a false cypress. You’d be surprised how good a rusty sedum seedhead can look to your life-starved eyes in a long gray winter. Winter is about dormancy for most plants, and in the case of the poor annuals, even death. Some plants, however, go with more grace than others, so choosing wisely is important.
Large suburban plots may have the luxury of separate beds that shine in various seasons, but in smaller city gardens, as in a studio apartment or a stage set, structure is all-important. Each plant should do double duty to earn its keep- which means having at least two seasons of interest, showing off in fruit, flower, bark, or leaf.
Lastly, in Seattle in particular, with four to six months of cloud-shrouded mist ahead, why would you abandon the joy of having beauty in your garden for as much as half the year?
Doing slightly more research than I did, you can boost the bones of your garden all year round. Beyond evergreen shrubs like dwarf conifers, boxwood, euonymus, and holly, you can find beauteous bark (Acer palmatum. ‘Sango Kaku’ / coral bark maple), luscious late bloomers (Hammamelis varieties/ witch hazel cultivars), and long-standing perennials like these stars recommended by Swanson’s Nursery:
- Heuchera (coral bells), You’ll enjoy the airy summer flowers, but you’ll love them for the mottled maple-like leaves that look hand-painted, offering color all winter. Prefers partial shade.
- Carex (sedge) species. Choose from evergreen, ever-gold and ever-brown varieties of low-growing fine-textured grasses.
- Bergenia – these low-growing shade-lovers have large fleshy rounded leaves (like a hosta cast in bronze), that flush burgundy in the cold. Great foliage combo with either of the above.
To these I would add: succulents like sedum and sempervivum cultivars and shrubby herbs like lavender, santolina and rosemary.
This is the perfect time of year to fantasize about improvements for next season. Fortunately, ideas are everywhere in the gardens of your neighbors, at the nursery, and in public park plantings, which are usually designed for year-round appeal. Walk the nabe with a camera or notebook, noting plants that are still standing, color combinations you’d like to try, even paving materials. Then get home, order a catalog or two for inspiration, and start plotting!
I took advantage of last weekend’s sunny-weather hiccup to sneak in six allium christophii (30% off – thank you Ken’s Market!). The grass in the back is Hakonechloa macra ‘All Gold’ – holding its own nicely.
That s very nice to see. It can make like a gift also.
just fell in love with the nursery tag description and failed to ask how the foliage stands up in winter.