How to Make Your Yard and Garden Look Good in Winter

If you're a gardener living in a cold-winter part of the country, you may think you have to leave your gardening hobby alone in the winter. But January is a great time of year to make plans for a garden that has winter interest.

Which Areas Need Some Help?

Get a pad and pen and perhaps a camera and walk around your yard. Make a special note of which areas you see a lot in the winter, such as ones you walk by when going to the car or mailbox. Notice which of these areas look drab this time of year. Winter is the perfect time to make plans for adding some special plants to those areas to make your garden and yard look interesting year round.

What makes a plant interesting in winter? Color, shape, or a combination of the two.

Evergreens
These are the obvious winter stars. There's a huge variety of evergreen shrubs, trees, and perennials that hang onto their leaves all year. Evergreens come in all shades of green, from a dark pine color to a bright almost lime green. Some are bright blue year round. Some turn a different color in the winter, such as Russian cypress, Microbiota decussata, which turns a reddish brown in winter and creeping juniper, Juniperus horizontalis, which turns a shade of dark plum in winter. Get a good book or ask your nursery salesperson which ones perform well in your climate zone and soil/sun conditions.

Dogwood, Cornus sericea
Both red-twig and yellow-twig dogwood are stunning in the winter. When the leaves have all dropped, you're left with brightly-colored bark, red and yellow respectively, that is a delight all winter.

Walking Stick, Corylus avellana "Contorta"
The Harry Lauder walking stick, also called a contorted filbert, is another deciduous shrub that looks fantastic in winter. It's a large shrub with branches that form tight corkscrews in all directions. Its charm is mostly a function of the wild branches, but it also has small yellow clusters hanging from it all winter.

Japanese Kerria, Kerria japonica
This large shrub also has interesting bark in winter. The color is like nothing else; kind of a yellowish green. Some specimens I've seen look bright green and are amazing.

Coral Bark Maple, Acer palmatum "Sango-kaku"
This is a small tree whose bark turns a bright red during cold weather. The branches have a nice shape, but it's the color that really makes this tree appealing.

Ornamental Grasses
Various types of ornamental grasses look wonderful in the winter. Most die back in the cold, but the grasses still look fantastic, especially poking up through the snow. The most dramatic are the ones with some height and large, feathery plumes.

Corkscrew Willow, Salix matsudana "Tortuosa"
This is a medium-sized tree that combines both the yellow color of a dogwood and the twisty branches of a walking stick. It can get 30 feet high, so it needs a spot with some room, but it also can be trimmed to keep it smaller. It looks wonderful in both summer and winter.

Variegated Yucca, Yucca filamentosa "Variegata"
The plain green yucca holds it's color in the winter, but it's not particularly spectacular. The variegated form of yucca, however, is terrific summer or winter. Its green and yellow vertical striped leaves are tall and rigid and look great in the winter, with or without snow.

Black Pussywillow, Salix gracilistyla
The black pussywillow is a large shrub that looks good in winter and spring. In winter its bark turns a dark burgundy color. In spring it bears numerous fuzzy black catkins that are fun to see.

Lenten Rose, Helleborus orientalis
Lenten Rose is a broad-leaved evergreen perennial whose deep green leaves look gorgeous in winter. If the snow is deep, it will be covered up, because it only gets about 12 inches tall. You might want to put it under an eave if you normally get a lot of snow because you want to be able to see it bloom in February. I have one right by my front door so I can enjoy the unusual experience of flowers blooming in the snow.

Look For Others in Your Yard

There are a number of other plants in my yard that aren't necessarily advertised as evergreen, but that stay green year round here in Zone 5. Winter is a great time to stroll around your yard and makes notes of which plants stay green or look interesting in some other way. That way, come spring, you can make sure you put them in the places where they will show off to you during the otherwise frustrating part of the year.