The Garden in Winter - What do you do?

Those bleak winter days can be a real challenge in the garden. I'm interested to know whether you try to keep your garden going over winter and what you do to cheer it up. Trees and shrubs with interesting bark perhaps, containers with seasonal planting, perennials and grasses with seedheads left in place? Or do you shut up shop, try not to look outside and hope everything will return in its glory in spring? Please tempt us to keep going with your thoughts, plans and photos here. Confessions and ideas are all welcome for some winter inspiration .

 

I have some containerised evergreens (a dwarf conifer Picea Albertuna, a Pieris, a Nandina and a couple of Euonymus) that I groupt near the front door for winter when the salvias etc in my summer display are finished, and I plant bulbs each year to put with them when they're coming into flower. The bulbs get planted in the garden after flowering and the evergreens moved to an out-of-the-way spot for the summer. Sometimes I put some lights on the conifer for December, but last year they'd broken/failed so I didn't bother. Maybe I'll buy another set. I've also been known to leave the half-baskets on the wall by the front door, cut back the dead petunias or whatever and stick lots of evergreen clippings (holly or viburnum) in them. It lasts quite a few weeks in cool/cold weather.

The rest of the garden tends to fend for itself bar a bit of tidying up if things fall across the paths/grass. I do most of the cutting back of perennials in late winter to early spring, doing the areas where the earliest bulbs are first, so that I can see the bulb flowers when they come through. Up until then, the old structure together with the bare branches of trees and shrubs sometimes look good with raindrops/dew/frost on them, and there are a few evergreens in the garden too, including a dark green viburnum by the front gate which looks good in winter.

 

I've already cut down a few perennials that were looking miserable and consigned any poor performers to the garden waste bin like the Portuguese laurel that has been looking sickly for the past two years. I've planted up a few containers, painted my garden furniture a neon yellow and planted several Heucheras and a Mahonia "Winter Sun" which is about to flower.

I've got quite a few evergreen shrubs in my garden so I've given some of them a trim to smarten them up. There's also lots of ornamental grasses which will keep the garden alive with movement and reflection of light. I'll then cut all the deciduous ones down to ground level at the end of February. I'm going to plant some tulips and Iris reticulata next month in containers and areas of the garden which are close to the house.

Here's some photos of progress so far:

 

A lot of my "summer" colour is still going strong into the autumn. It's far too soon for me to be thinking about cutting it down!

 

@Plantminded I love love love yellow and your seating is lovely!

Winter and Gardening outdoors?

 

Ha ha, we rarely get more than a light covering of snow here, and if we do it normally doesn't last very long.

 

That's a stunner @JennyJB, is it an Agastache? It looks great with your salvias.

 

Thank you @CanadianLori. Looks like you've got some good ski slopes for your bird life there .

 

No Agastache in that section (I don't think so anyway!) There are four salvias - Lara (pale pink on the left), Cool Cream (on the right), Phyllis Fancy (centre) and Amistad (behind Phyllis). The silver far left is the edge of a big clump of Artemisia.

 

Thank you @JennyJB, I should have recognised Amistad as I grow it but mine aren't as impressive as yours!

 

Well jell of your fluffy white stuff, @CanadianLori.

I don't do anything to disguise winter. It takes me till Feb to get all the leaves up with my grabber, and I have some evergreen ground cover and ferns. I don't dislike bare twigs. I find their shapes rather pleasing. I don't mind the gaps where the perennials disappear as these are covered with stones, so there are no expanses of bare brown earth.

I don't do any winter pots as my summer osteospermums tend to flower till Nov and start up again in Feb.

So, really, I guess I just go for the natural look.

 

I find it very much depends on the type of Winter weather we get.

All the December/January gardening magazines seem to carry photos of gardens with the low Winter sun shining through frost touched Miscanthus, and red berries glistening in the dew.
The photographer Clive Nichols is very good at capturing that kind of look.

I could count on the fingers of one hand the times I've seen that in my own garden .
Either everything is flattened by a heavy frost or snow (albeit rarely by snow these days), or it's all collapsed into a brown soggy mess following days or weeks of non stop rain.
Any berries have been scoffed by the pigeons long before the shortest day.

I tend to concentrate on a few pots of evergreens such as Sarcococca by the back door and some Narcissi in pots to brighten up the days from around February onwards. I'm planting dwarf iris in the pots in the windowbox outside the kitchen window this year, then after that I sit back to wait for the tulips to appear.

I think a good plant for a Winter garden is Cornus aka Dogwood. Planted in the right location to catch any Winter sunlight they can look stunning.

 

I have plenty of trees and enjoy getting a good view of the birds in them when they are bare. Over the winter I have a hazel that needs coppicing, and I'll need to think about what to do with the dead box hedge in the front garden. Should I cut it down, or leave it as a support and grow something rambling over it? Maybe a rose? It's not performing any important function as a boundary.

I've been planting a fair amount of evergreen and winter-flowering shrubs, and expect I will add more to my collection of Hellebores over the season. I've got a couple of potted Daphnes on the patio so will look forward to those flowering.

I need to get someone in to sort my patio out too, it's no longer level and there's lots of loose slabs.

 

I like that description of the Clive Nichols photos @AnniD! Also, you’re right, all those Cornus varieties with coloured stems are stunning in winter. The only problem with them, I have found, is that once they start to grow and are in leaf they are not at all attractive and need some careful disguising!

 

I find it interesting to observe what regrows. There is far more going on between December and March than over the summer.