The Off-Season Garden: 6 Tips for a Beautiful Winter Landscape

We’re a month away from the winter solstice, but that’s no reason to ignore your garden. In his debut book, Plants for the Winter Garden, nurseryman and garden designer Warren Leach celebrates the off-season garden. A plantsman by trade, Leach catalogs the many plants with interesting seed heads, enduring stalks, prominent berries, and evergreen leaves. However, this book goes well beyond a list of plants that offer the proverbial “winter interest.” Leach also discusses the design principles that make a garden sing in winter. In Leach’s photos many plants are shown within a garden context, so readers can see how they are actually used—not just close-up glamor shots of berries, blossoms, and bark (although there are plenty of those to be enjoyed). In a particularly satisfying maneuver, Leach also shows us several gardens in their full summer glory and from the same angle in deep winter.

“The garden should be celebrated all times of the year,” says Leach. He hopes that this book will not only inspire gardeners to plant for winter beauty, but also get outside and interact with their winter landscapes. “I grew up in Maine, I love walking around in winter,” says Leach. “I go for a walk with my dog first thing in the morning and I love just seeing hoar frost or the patterns of ice, and the light and the foliage.” With Leach as a guide, gardeners might just find themselves welcoming the winter months. Here are 6 favorite plants and techniques from Plants for the Winter Garden:

Photography by Warren Leach.

1. Focus on the entry garden.

If you’ve never designed or planted with winter interest in mind, Leach suggests starting with the garden near the entrance to your home because it’s a place you’ll see often even in the most frigid weather. In the book, Leach devotes a chapter to entry gardens, showcasing six that he has designed. He suggests something as simple as adding a winterberry holly or a lush, evergreen groundcover can give you beauty all through the winter.

2. Include strong vertical forms.

“Vertical forms are focal points, obviously, but they can be used in many different ways,” says Leach. “They stop your eye or allow you to look past them. They can subdivide space and make a small space seem larger. They’re very dynamic in terms of design.” However, there is one place Leach cautions not to place a strong vertical form: Next to the corner of the house. “They need to be their own, so their own silhouette is striking,” he says.

3. Choose plants for their”‘enduring remnants.”

As gardeners move away from overzealous “fall cleanup,” they’ll discover the beauty of the remains of summer-flowering perennial. Among the “enduring remnants” that have presence in the winter garden, Leach highlights the six-foot-tall candelabras of Olympic mullein (Verbascum olympicum) and Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum), a smaller herbaceous perennial with woody flower stems that support candelabra spikes, and showy stonecrop (Hylotelephium spectabile), whose flat, umbel flowers become attractive flat, brown disks that collect snow. As a bonus, Leach points out that spent flower heads provide food, and stems and leaves offer shelter for beneficial insects and pollinators.

4. Let witch hazel enchant you.

“Witch hazels are so underused,” says Leach. He encourages gardeners to explore the many varieties, including our native American witchhazel (Hamamelis virginiana L.) and the Asian witch hazels, like Hamamelis × intermedia ‘Arnold Promise’ or ‘Jelena.‘ “Witch hazels are these wonderful plants that bloom for months, but there are so few of them,” laments Leach. “I tell the garden clubs it’s their responsibility to plant one in a public library, a post office, or some public space.” A versatile understory tree, Leach notes that witch hazels will grow in anything from full sun to partial shade, but like any flowering plant more sun equals more blooms.

5. Focus on verdant foliage.

“A verdant garden appears fresh and alive,” says Leach, and therefore evergreen plants are essential in the winter garden. Leach includes a section on evergreen broadleaf trees and shrubs, and a particular favorite of his are plants with glossy, green leaves like evergreen magnolias like Magnolia virginiana ‘Sweetbay.’ “Those plants are very striking because of their larger evergreen leaves—they’re a strong presence in the winter,” says Leach.

Another evergreen option: Hardy ferns. “Their delicate, pinnately dissected green fronds offer a contrast to the snowy winter landscape,” says Leach. His list of native evergreen ferns include species of Polypodium, Polystichum, Dryopteris, and Asplenium. For an unusual form, Leach suggests Hart’s tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendrium), whose leaves have a tropical-looking appearance.

6. Simplify your plant palette.

Leach says once you get excited about plants with winter interest it can be easy to get carried away. He cautions to avoid planting one each of a dozen different plants. “Be selective in what you’re picking, it can be very simple,” he says. “I won’t say it’s a bad thing, but having a menagerie of too many colored dwarf conifers, for example, might not always be harmonious.”

See also:

• Get Twiggy with It: 7 Favorite Shrubs with Winter Blooms and Berries
• Required Reading: The Dramatic Colors of Winter Gardens
• Expert Advice: 9 Tips for a Moody Winter Garden