Fall Showers Bring
Winter Flowers
Julia Cluderay can't stand a garden that isn't au courant.
That is why after spending thousands of dollars on designers who planted juniper and spruce shrubs, she ripped those bushes out to complete her newest project: a winter garden. So this year, when December rolls around and her neighbors' yards are under mulch, Ms. Cluderay's garden will be bursting with purple foliage, magenta berries, and pink flowers.
The old look was "expensive and boring," Ms. Cluderay says dismissively. Now "I have bright color every month of the year, including January and February."
Garden obsessives, get out your hoes. "Winter landscaping" has arrived. Bored with the pansies and mums that usually kick color into suburban yards from November through February, gardening devotees are on to the next big thing -- vibrant winter yardscapes. Searching the Internet, books and catalogs, these plant lovers are turning up relatively obscure perennials that flower in winter, bushes with brightly colored leaves, not to mention bark and berries as bright as a box of Crayons. Granted, such blooms don't pack the punch of a rose or peony in full flower, but their unexpected zip is livening up lawns and expanding the gardening year by months.
Beautiful, All Year
"People used to forget about their gardens in winter," Chicago landscape architect Maria Smithburg says. "Now they want their homes to look beautifully designed, in and out, all year."
They also are digging deep in their pockets to do so. In the past four years, sales of winter plants have jumped between 60% and 100% at Ken Twombly's nursery in Monroe, Conn. At Sunshine Farm & Gardens in Renick, W. Va., sales of $12 Lenten roses -- one of the trendiest winter flowers -- are 10 times what they were last year. And White Flower Farm in Litchfield, Conn. reports that sales of $32 potted Christmas roses have increased 75% in four years.
This doesn't mean gardeners have taken leave of their senses to prune and trim in freezing temperatures. Winter-blooming perennials get planted in the fall; then, when temperatures drop, gardeners sit comfortably indoors and enjoy the view. The idea originated in Europe, as many recent design trends have. It has caught on fast in the U.S. because of a pervasive and peculiarly American trend in home building: the great room/kitchen -- and their huge expanses of floor-to-ceiling windows.
From Diana Nyberg's Madison, Wisc., great room, for example, the garden "looks smashing in the summer." But she wanted something equally fabulous to look at the rest of the year. Ms. Nyberg, a part-time gardener, strung three garden arbors with tiny lights and planted a row of red-twig dogwoods, Cornus alba Sibirica, in front of seven evergreen pine trees. When the dogwood shrubs lose their leaves, their bare red branches "look frosty and beautiful ... with the white snow and the green pines," she says.
Finding the Right Plants
Given the newness of the trend, finding the right winter plants -- and someone to help tend them -- isn't so easy. Holly Fine, a documentary filmmaker in Washington, D.C., went through four gardeners before finding one who specialized in plants that would make it through the cold season. One of her favorite winter finds -- the beauty berry -- was practically an accident. She discovered the bush, with its metallic-magenta berries, while shopping in one of the city's older neighborhoods. "I looked in every garden book I had and asked every gardener I knew what it could be," says Ms. Fine, who now has several of the shrubs.
For money-conscious homeowners, planting winter wonderlands also is a way to get more bang for their garden buck. Last year alone, U.S. spending on professional landscaping grew by one-third to $8.6 billion from the prior year, according to a survey by the Gallup Poll and the National Gardening Association. That doesn't include the billions that went for such trendy items as ponds, outdoor furniture, fireplaces and gazebos. In a winter landscape, such investments get more play, because they are easier to see without summer leaves and flowers.
The most ingenious addition to a winter landscape? Leftover summer plants, says Krystal Lund, a health-care technician in Waco, Texas. Her current favorites: ornamental grasses that turn reddish-brown at this time of the year. They "are technically dead, I guess, but they do 'dead' so much prettier than everything else," says Ms. Lund. "Covered in frost, they steal the show."
When the Bloom Is Off the Rose
The best thing about creating a winter landscape may be that it doesn't require a shovel or galoshes. Here's what gardeners are planting now so that in January, all they need to do is light a fire and look out the window:
WINTER BLOOMERS
Variety & Cost:
Christmas sweet box an evergreen shrub with tiny white flowers
Pasque flower a perennial with lavender and yellow flowers
Winter heath a 12-inch-tall shrub with purple, pink or white flowers
Perennials sell for about $10 to $15. The shrubs sell for about $25 to $30.
When to Plant: By mid-October, to let roots take hold in the soil before frost. Experts suggest lots of compost, then mulching with shredded pine bark.
When They Bloom: From early winter to late spring, depending on the time of each year's frost.
How Much Care: Cut the perennials back in late spring, after the blooms have faded. The shrubs don't need to be pruned annually.
EVERGREENS
Variety and Cost:
Dragon's-eye pine native to Japan, with red bark and a twisted shape
Pearl flower a shrub whose leaves turn burgundy in fall and winter
Variegated Adam's needle a perennial with swordlike yellow leaves
From $25 for a small specimen, to more than $100 for one in a large pot.
When to Plant: At any time of the year, including well into late fall.
When They Bloom: The pearl flower has pinkish blossoms in cold weather. The Adam's needle bears white flowers in summer. The pine doesn't have flowers.
How Much Care: All are easy-care, although they should be planted in well-drained soil. All require full sun.
BERRIES AND SEED PODS
Variety and Cost:
Beauty berry a four-foot-tall deciduous shrub with magenta berries
Blackberry lily a lily with apricot-colored flowers in summer and winter pods with clusters of blackberrylike seeds
Spindle tree a small tree covered in bright pink fruits
From $20 to $50, depending on maturity of the plant.
When to Plant: Early-to-late fall, before the ground freezes.
When They Bloom: The spindle tree bears insignificant flowers. But the others in this group are valued by gardeners for their spring foliage, summer-to-fall flowers and winter berries.
How Much Care: Feed with a time-release plant food in the spring, after their berries disappear.
BEAUTY WITHOUT LEAVES
Variety and Cost:
Curly willow a fast-growing tree with curling branches and twisted twigs
Harry Lauder's Walking Stick a filbert tree with wavy branches
Red-twig dogwood a red-leafed deciduous shrub made of a dense thicket of slender, shiny red stems.
From $150 and up, depending on size.
When to Plant: Any time between early spring and late fall, except for the hottest summer months.
When They Bloom: Except for the willow, all bear beautiful blooms. The filbert has yellow flowers in late winter, and the dogwood has yellow flowers in summer.
How Much Care: Plant in full sun and prune in the early spring.
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