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Winter-
The Longest
Landscape Season
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As the inevitable autumn winds
strip the last of this season’s colorful fall
foliage from, the region’s landscape is entering its
longest season. From now through early April—a
full five months, the only dramatic change to the
Wyobraska landscape will be an occasional blanket of
snow. But that doesn’t mean that the winter
landscape need be drab or uninteresting. With a
little planning the winter landscape can its own
unique visual experiences that provide a timely
backdrop for the seasons many family oriented
holidays, and for the slower pace that inevitably
follows in late winter.
There are three types of plants
that are essential ingredients in an optimal
Wyobraska winter landscape—evergreen trees and
shrubs, deciduous trees and shrubs with strong
winter interest, and “sturdy” perennials.
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A number of perennial plants
also can provide strong winter landscape interest.
Foremost among the perennials in winter are the
ornamental grasses. Most grasses achieve their full
seasonal size late in summer or in early autumn, and
retain most of that size through the entire winter.
Their primary contribution is their movement in the
winter wind, but some, like big and little bluestem
and flame grass also retain much of their maroon
fall color throughout the winter.
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Previous Articles
Fractions March 15
Yardner March 8
Urban
Legends of Trees March 22
Que
Serra, Serra March 29
Grocery Store or Garbage Dumpster Plants April 5
Planning Your Landscape Project April 12
Planting
Cool Trees April 19
Keeping
Trees Alive April 26
Thrillers, Chillers, Spillers May 03
Will
You Still Love Them May 10
Ornamental Grasses May 17
In
Memory of Cedar Trees May 24
Gardening is not Childs Play
Versatile
Viburnums June 6
Yardner Plants
June 13
2007
Garden Walk and
Blue Spruce Decline
The Birds
& Bees of Butterfly Gardening June 28
Summer
Landscaping July 5
Cutting Your Lawn Down to Size July 12
Some Like it
Hot!! July 19
When a Tree
Falls on 5th Ave
July 26
Green
Landscaping August 2
American Idol-Landscape Aug 9
Fall is
for Planting Aug 16
Is your Landscape Neat or Messy? Aug 23
The
Seeds of a good Landscape Aug 29
Big Red Fall
Color Sep 6
Fall Landscaping Tips Sept 13
Fall Lawn Care Sept 20
The Colors of
Autumn Sept 27
Fall is for Xeriscaping Oct 04
The
New Wyobraska Fall Oct 11
2006 Articles |
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Within the last few weeks,
evergreen trees and shrubs have moved from the
visual background to the visual foreground of our
landscapes. Pine, juniper, and spruce are the major
evergreens. Ponderosa pine, limber pine, and rocky
mountain juniper are native trees which will grow in
virtually any landscape in the region. Pinion pine,
lodgepole pine, and bristlecone pine are native to
adjacent regions of the rocky mountains, as are
Colorado and black hills spruce. And because
evergreens are superbly adapted to semi-arid
climates, a number of non-native evergreens like
Austrian pine, scotch pine, and Norway spruce are
also options for the region’s landscapes.
In my experience, the role of
evergreens in a Wyobraska landscape is so important,
that they are the first plants I place in a
landscape plan. I have a rule of thumb that
approximately 1/3 of the “visual mass” of a
landscape should be evergreens. That proportion is
based on studying landscapes in winter, and seeing
first-hand the level of interest that they can
contribute for the entire duration of the region’s
longest landscape season.
Most homeowners select
deciduous trees and shrubs for their landscape based
primarily on the basis of their summertime. But
there are a number of deciduous trees and shrubs
that also have considerable winter interest.
Red-twigged dogwood is perhaps the best example of a
deciduous shrub with winter interest. A red-twigged
dogwood planted near an evergreen tree creates a
particularly attractive winter scene. Other
deciduous plants with winter interest include many
of the crabapple trees (small colorful fruit that
remains on the tree through the winter), shrub roses
(colorful orange and red hips), Bur oOk/Kentucky
Coffee Tree/Catalpa trees (uniquely coarse bark and
branching structure), and smaller shrubs like blue
mist spirea and hydrangea (flowers which dry and
remain on the stems).
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And what could be better than a perennial flower
which blooms in the summertime garden and which has
sturdy enough stems to stand erect through all of
the winter winds and snows. It’s relatively
unusually for a flowering perennial to retain
visual interest through the winter, but there are a
surprisingly large group of perennials that fall
into this three-four season category. Goldsturm
rudbeckia, tall sedums, a number of the yarrows,
baptisia, Shasta daisy, and some of the monardas are
examples of multi-season perennials. Monarda and
yarrow may begin to break down by late winter, but
the stems of goldsturm rudbeckia and baptisia are
almost shrub-like and will be as sturdy in early
April and they were in late October.
By blending combinations of all three of these types
of plants with winter interest it is possible to
create winter landscape scenes that give winter its
own distinctive seasonal quality. The fullness of a
well-developed winter landscape is also attractive
to winter wildlife. Expect to see a variety of
birds, rabbits, and squirrels—all taking advantage
of the abundance of food and cover that can be found
in a landscape designed with winter in mind.
If you are the “neat and tidy”
type, it may be difficult for you to resist the urge
to cut back perennials and ornamental grasses
already this fall. A well-designed Wyobraska
landscape can look a little disorderly from time to
time through the winter. But see it covered with a
few inches of fresh snow, or watch all of that
movement on a sunny and breezy January afternoon,
and you’ll be glad that you resisted that late fall
urge to cut back these important winter interest
plants. Instead, begin your spring clean up in late
February or early March at the latest. By then
you’ll be itching to get outside to do a little yard
work, and you will have a good reason to do just
that. And between now and then you’ll be able to
enjoy your unique Wyobraska winter landscape.
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