I’ll go easy on you until after Christmas, but here is a good planning exercise to have fun with over the holidays:
You’ll notice that with the leaves all down, things sort of look, well, different. Things you forgot were there just seem to leap out at you; the neighbour’s rusty wheelbarrow, the air conditioner, the transformer on the lawn out front ~ where did they come from? This is the perfect time to make some notes about what you might want to screen from view so that you can plant it (think evergreens) or build it (think screens and trellises) before next fall.
This is also a good time of year to look around and see just how interesting and exciting some of the dead stuff looks. This ‘winter interest’ is an important consideration for most landscape designers. It’s a time of year when the form of the plant is very much more obvious without the leaves. Just today on my walk, for example, I spotted a huge, very old Smoke Bush ~ Cotinus coggygria ~ with the spent flower structures still intact like puffs of smoke, and wonderful, rough bark all exposed on graceful trunks.
It’s a time of year when many plants are at their best, and these are part of our holiday décor; the bright berries and shiny dark leaves on the evergreen holly (remember ~ you need separate male and female plants to get fruit), the berries on deciduous holly and bitter-sweet, the sumac fruit clusters, and the wonderful bark of red and yellow-twig dogwood and flame willow are just a few examples.
More subtle, but every bit as beautiful, are the dried up spent flowers and seed heads of the ornamental grasses and the perennials. These are important sources of food and nesting materials for the birds and wild critters, so don’t be in a hurry to ‘tidy up’ the garden for the winter. Sedum, asters, coneflowers, monarda, golden rod (a great garden plant with an undeserved bad rap) and many other perennials are structurally beautiful through the winter. Look at the wild places for inspiration: un-tended fields, along the trails, in the ditches, and in the gardens of Those Who Know.
If you want to explore ideas further for wild (and wildlife-supportive) gardens with year-round interest, I have a couple of reading suggestions:
1) Just about anything by Piet Oudolf:
I had the pleasure of attending a course at the Toronto Botanical Garden given by this gentle giant from the Netherlands. His meticulously-crafted wild gardens, like the must-see Lurie Garden in Millennium Park in downtown Chicago, are astonishingly beautiful all year, as his designs are based on structural beauty, not the flashy flowers of over-hybridized species. Planting the Natural Garden and Planting Design would be a couple of very enjoyable and instructive reads.
2) Natural Landscaping by Sally Roth:
This is the literary equivalent of a big mug of hot chocolate: tons of cultural tips and plant recommendations and garden ideas to help you develop wonderful, natural spaces to attract and sustain the wild things.
So ~ after Christmas, when you’ve returned the Homer Simpson musical coasters and the George Foreman Taco-Master 5000, plan to curl up with a good read. Don’t forget to request these books from the wonderful staff at the Library. You can bet they’ll find them for you on the inter-library system, and you can put $2 in the donation box to thank them for saving you from buying a $40 book.
Have a wondrous, peaceful and healthy Christmas. We’ll talk again soon.
Thomas Dean of Black Sheep Design in Meaford, is a graduate of the University of Guelph in Horticulture and Landscape Design. Thomas will be a regular contributor of gardening and horticulture articles for The Meaford Independent.
You can contact Thomas by emailing: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
