Guide to the Best Plants for Winter Landscaping

A diverse group of plants makes a great winter landscape to provides a focal point in your yard, is important for wildlife and that creates a healthy garden. You might be surprised to realize and discover all the different types of plants that can make up an interesting winter landscape, and often times it is the way in which you group different plants that makes the landscape interesting.

Instead of just grouping conifers of different sizes, try some of these plant varieties in your garden. Even without leaves and flowers, they can still make up a beautiful winter garden.

Trees
When choosing trees for winter landscaping, it is important to look for varieties that have an interesting shape, bark or even fruit. More importantly, you need to choose trees and other plants that are native to your area so that your plants do not stress out, or stress out the rest of your garden. The Southern Hawthorn is a very dense tree, that is small enough to include in a landscape gathering with other shrubs, conifers and trees. Even better, the Southern Hawthorn bears fruit that stays on the tree through the winter months, adding a little color to the garden. Because of its small size it can be used as a planting in the foreground or middle ground and combined with several other plants and shrubs.

The Flowering Dogwood, when pruned, is a great addition to a winter landscape because its lower limbs grow on the horizontal rather than upward. Younger branches will grow upward after the older ones have matured, but they are often pruned off to keep the cascading look that dogwoods are famous for. Corkscrew Willow has an interesting shape all on its own, the branches grow in a corkscrew manner and fall to the ground. Both of these trees are able to grow in many hardiness zones in North America, so adding them to your own garden is easy.

Grasses
Ornamental grasses are very easy to work with and add an incredible amount of diversity to a winter landscape. Grasses add height, color, unique foliage and catch the snow to create a dramatic look. Some of the best ornamental grasses for the widest hardiness zones and landscaping purposes are White Pampas Grass, Zebra Grass, and Bear Skin Fescue.

White Pampas Grass and Zebra Grass grow in a tall vertical direction, but each offers a very dramatic look. Zebra grass is striped and shines in the sun, especially off of the snow. White Pampas Grass is very bushy, very tall and has huge white plumes that add color and shape to the landscape. On the other hand, Bear Skin Fescue is a small dense grass, that makes an almost shrub like shape. The deep green color stays through the fall and the beginning of winter and can be positioned to create a low border.

Grouping
Whenever creating a garden landscape, including a winter landscape, it is important to build the garden with different levels in mind. Low growing grasses, and shrubs are great to add to the front of your landscape. Small and large trees should be added to the middle ground and tall conifers in the background. Play around with plants that you are considering and remember that some plants, like your grasses, will need to be divided eventually so it is important to leave room for them to grow and spread out.