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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
Previous Articles
It's
Finally Spring - March 13
Spring Garden Calendar-March 20
No
Garden Left Behind-March 27
Planting Trees for a Cooler Earth in a Warmer
WyoBraska-April 3
Viburnums - Shrubs for Wyobraska Springs-April 10
Want A Water Conserving Lawn? You might already have
one-
April 17
Creating Long
Term
Tree-lationships April 24
Bigger, Bolder, Brighter,
Better—and Back In The Landscape May 01 & 08
Hardy Shrub
Roses
May 15
Another Look
at Native Plants
May 22
No Child
Left Inside
May 29
June
is Tree Care Month June 05
Summer Blooming Shrubs
June 12
Roses Are
Red.....
June 19
The Plants They will be Talking About Next Year at
the Garden Walk
June 26
Busy Summertime Gardens
July 03
Cutting Your Lawn Down to Size
July 10
July 17
Insect Paranoia
If It Will Grow In Wyoming...
July 24
Rain Gardens
July31
WyoBraska Native Grass & Wildflower Lawn
August 7
A Real WyoBraska Peach?
(Fruit Trees) August 14
Fall is for Planting
August 21
A Recipe for Enjoying Autumn Landscapes August 28
Seeing Red in your Landscape
September 4
Four Questions to Ask A Plant
September 11
September Plants
September 18
Mulch, Nature's Winter Blanket
September 25
Welcome to Hardiness Zone 5
October 2
The
Changing Fall Landscape
October 9
A Few Fall Landscape Reminders
October 16
2007 Articles
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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