Who says winter is desolate? If you know where to look, you can find plenty of flowers, berries and lush foliage in snowy weather. Bringing that great color and texture into your garden will give you something cheery to look at while you wait for spring to come back around. Here are just a few of your winter planting options.
Blue Atlas Cedar
Also called blue Atlantic cedar, you can let this stunning evergreen grow into a bushy tree to train it like a topiary. It’s gorgeous blue-green color, elegant needles and gnarled trunk makes a gorgeous “weeping”-style topiary.
Boxwood
Bright, evergreen boxwoods provide structure and a visual anchor to your garden in any season, even winter. They make full, shapely hedges that can be given loose or formal trims depending on your tastes.
Camellias
Camellias are the rose of winter, putting out gorgeous blooms from late fall into early spring depending on the variety. They can be grown as trees or shrubs, and the blooms can range in color from bright red and fuchsia to delicate pinks and whites.
Ornamental Cabbage
For unique shapes and colors, it’s hard to beat ornamental cabbage. They add much-needed color to early winter months and can tolerate a lot of neglect. Well-tended rosettes can grow to over a foot wide, showing off deep purple, white, blue, red and pink in almost unearthly textures.
Pansies
We often treat pansies like annuals, but with the right treatment, they’re biennials. They’ll last from one spring through another before they go to seed. All you need to do is mulch them and make sure they get adequate water over winter. In beds or planters, the flowers are a welcome sight.
Winterberry
This variety of holly is a peculiar fellow. It drops all its leaves in fall, then bursts with shockingly red berries over winter. They cool-weather berries are a sight to behold, and the branches are thick with fairytale-flawless, emerald leaves the rest of the year.
These plants can fill out your landscaping in the growing seasons and shine with much-needed color, texture, dimension and shape while the rest of your garden sleeps in winter. Space them out to add something to look at in every corner of your yard. You’ll have a dazzling show all year long.
