The day before Christmas, I was gathering colorful ‘Arctic Fire’ cornus twigs in the garden, and was feeling pretty content about the fact that the surrounding scene wasn’t the winter wasteland it once had been. Creating a garden that can stand proudly – or at least unashamedly – when leaves are gone and soils are grey is rewarding; but it is a process requiring patience and perspective. I’m not there yet, but I’ve planted and planned enough that I can see a destination point on the far-off horizon.
The winter garden was top of mind not only for the scene that stretched before me, but from a conversation I’d just had with Leslie Harris on her podcast about the need to keep moving, working and planning during the winter months. And I’d had a teensy bit of convincing to do.
I get it. I’m in the minority. There’s plenty of gardeners in warmer and colder climates who have no desire to garden during the winter months when the default indoor position is widely accepted and roundly defended.
Not to mention a damn sight warmer.
And I see those gardeners all the time – virtually. Instagram, my social media platform-of-choice, constantly suggests posts throughout the winter months that reflect and dream about the spring and summer months.
When it’s not suggesting lifting techniques for my aging face.
But that’s not why I started using Instagram. I’ve got books and magazines for dreaming. And I’m really good with my current choice of face cream.
Instagram originally offered this curious gardener the gateway drug of gardens in real time – which the books could not. I curated my feed to understand and measure seasons from gardeners and gardens I knew and respected throughout the US and the world for that reason.
I can’t do that if you’re showing me your ‘Profusion’ Zinnia in February and you live in Ohio. Now, if you’ve got them in a greenhouse or on a dining room table, that’s another story altogether. In that case I want to know how you pulled off that particular piece of black magic in case I want to dabble in a little witchcraft myself next year.
I get it. I’m in the minority.
Helleborus HGC® ‘Joker’
Words Spoken In Haste
So back to that Christmas Eve. Standing there, grinning like an idiot at the shapes and colors and textures before my eyes, I felt great thankfulness that my life in the garden isn’t end-capped by garden center pansies and kale displays. I felt real, palpable joy.
It is in these happy, idealistic moments (and others involving alcohol), that we must never – under any circumstances – grab our phones and shoot off our mouths using our thumbs.
I did. In that moment I wanted to champion the act of stepping outside in winter and enjoying the opportunities of this special season – and why you don’t need psychiatric help if you say things like that.
Two minutes later I had locked myself into a daily Instagram #whywintergarden challenge for the next three months that will either kill me or make me stronger. Much like winter.
Ever since, I’ve been sharing the plant stars in my Northern Virginia Zone 6b winter garden, techniques I use, gear that’s crucial, views I adore, creatures that visit, weirdness that happens, and basically, why the hell I’m out there on a daily basis. Besides forcing me to put my money where my mouth is, it’s also forcing me to learn skills in the digital world on the fly.
Unlike horticultural skills, this is knowledge that will most likely be eclipsed in six months’ time – but what the hell.
And no, it’s not a countdown. If anything, it’s a count-up – a celebration – ending with the last day of winter, NOT the first day of spring. We spend so much time putting our heads down and getting through winter that we end up putting our heads down and getting through winter. It’s hard to appreciate anything in that position, and it’s equally hard to enjoy any part of one full quarter of a precious year if you’re ticking off days until spring.
There’s winter and then there’s winter.
I’m not naïve. For the record, I separate winter into three distinct stages –
Early winter usually keeps you distracted with holiday fun and resolutions you can’t seem to keep, plus the last of the bulbs you’re crazy late about getting in.
By this point we may well have had snow and some very cold weather in my 6B Virginia garden. Last year, we experienced the three-day sudden freeze shared by so many. But for the most part, things are not too awful, and you optimistically feel like you’ve got this winter garden thing locked up.
One view of my lower garden in late December last year.
That’s when you pledge yourself to onerous challenges.
Mid-winter, aka “[In The Bleak] Midwinter, aka The Grey Times, is pretty grim. It’s as cold as it will probably be and we experience snow and ice storms.
But then again, there are snow and ice storms. If you’ve planted twisted trees like Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’, or Citrus poncirus in your front garden, you’ll be the subject of many neighborhood photo shoots. Here’s where you can plant for candy-colored barks and cool shapes. Here’s where the topography of your garden comes into [literal sharp relief] and fascinates you, or bores the living hell out of you because it’s so flat and dull.
View of the upper garden after a light snowfall in February.
Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’ (Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick) in another February
…and another
Perhaps that’s what missing in your summer garden and the plants stopped you from seeing it. You can’t beat the structural and design perspective that mid-winter gives you.
Late winter used to be the toughest on me. Mostly because I would visit my family in California at the end of February and beginning of March and see rosemary flowering, and maples in leaf, and then come home with excitement only to realize I was still six long weeks away from the green rapture. And my rosemary was dead.
But now I have planted so many late winter/early spring blooming plants and trees, that I feel saddened if I miss their blooms because I’m in California. Go figure.
Edgeworthia chrysantha ‘Snow Cream’
Hamamelis ‘Pallida’ in late February two years ago.
Skill Building & Perspective
I’m not a winter garden expert. Far from it. I’ve simply come to the very personal conclusion that its worth my time, effort, health and happiness to extend my outdoor life by extending my garden season.
It’s a conclusion easily dismissible by those who don’t. I know, I was one of them for a long time. It’s far less painful to say “I don’t do a winter garden,” than to look outside and see twenty pathetic Tête-à-tête daffodils poking their heads above an arctic tundra and making the entire scene more pitiable than it already is.
If you’re going to attempt it, it’s crucial to begin with the understanding that the winter garden is a completely different animal to the spring or summer garden, and should be designed to exemplify the moments of exquisite beauty present in the colder months, not to re-create something that cannot be re-created. Textures and shapes are key, but so is subtlety.
With thought and effort, those twenty doleful and disembodied Tête-à-têtes can become two hundred little flames interspersed with the fresh blossoms of hellebores under a canopy of red winterberries. And one year, standing with flushed, rosy cheeks and a broad smile across your face, you have a rapturous moment where you realize you’ve broken the back of it.
And then it’s game on.
Join Me on the Dark Side?
If you’re a winter garden enthusiast in a cold climate with a dormant season, I’d love it if you shared your winter garden ideas and plants with me on Instagram by hashtagging #whywintergarden and making sure I know where you garden, and in what USDA zone – so I can share them in my Stories @marianne.willburn . If you’re not in the US, your lowest average temperature would be helpful. You can find snippets of each day in my story highlights under #WWG .
For those of you who don’t garden in a cold climate with a dormant season, I’m sorry.
And for those of you who want to sit this one out and observe (or perhaps ridicule me in the comments below) – again, I get it. I’m not sure where this crazy challenge will take me. As of this post I’m on Day 11. Perhaps I’ll get to Day 45 and start crying on camera.
But it’s more than likely my tears will have more to do with Instagram nonsense than the beauty that’s out there for the curious gardener to discover. – MW
The Why Winter Garden Challenge: Join Me? originally appeared on GardenRant on January 4, 2024.
The post The Why Winter Garden Challenge: Join Me? appeared first on GardenRant.
