Waking Up For Winter: Winterscaping

They shed spring outer layers – blooms, buds and bold colors – to expose cool-weather skeletons. But charismatic landscapes don’t have to expire at summer’s end. Winter provides plants an opportunity to show off a different visual dimension.

Drawing winter interest to a landscape involves looking past a plant’s colorful flowering cloak and appreciating secondary plant characteristics, such as structure, texture, foliage and berries. Even deadheads and dried ornamental grasses add ambiance to a gloomy winter atmosphere, noted Bill Fehrenbach, president, The Pattie Group, Novelty, Ohio.

"We pick plant material that can make a statement in all four seasons," he added. "It’s easy to pick flowers that bloom nicely together, but the trick is to pick plants that flower well and also make a nice statement during the winter."

PHASE IN. Winterscape is not a special installation or a separate sale, but instead, part of a plant cycle. It is one phase a landscape encounters as seasons progress, and an important consideration for designers, pointed out Paul Ganshert, owner, Ganshert Nursery & Landscapes, Madison, Wis.

"A lot of people just plant perennial gardens, and I say, ‘What will it look like in the winter?’ and that’s six months out of the year," he said, going on to describe an ideal plant that would offer interesting characteristics in each season. "You’d have a flower in spring or early summer, you’d have leaves through the growing season, maybe a multiple bloom later on and a fruit or berry development in late summer or fall that would stay on through the winter months. Once the leaves fall, there could be twig interest."

Contractors need to think outside the box, so to speak, and visualize this skeleton plant phase, when leaves drop from trees and petals peel off of flowers, suggested Brian Akehurst, vice president, Akehurst Landscaping, Joppa, Md.

"You have to be creative and consider not just how it’s going to look in the summer, but how it’s going to look in the winter," he emphasized.

Being creative with winter-ready plants can be difficult, and choosing appealing year-round options requires forecasting a plant’s cool-weather qualities, said Brian Horstmann, landscape designer, Chalet Landscape Division, Wilmette, Ill. "With winterscape you have to study what the textures of the plants are – really, you’re playing with the texture of it," he explained. "That’s why it’s important to couple deciduous and evergreen material, so you have some structure that will always be the same."

Texture, structure and foliage are the crown molding of a landscape. Contractors who construct designs from these foundation elements will create a stable, winter-friendly landscape, Horstmann added.

"An evergreen is like the backbone of the human body – it’s the part that holds and ties the entire design together," he related. "A designer would take that into consideration and ask, ‘Where do I need that background or structure all the time to create this space?’"

Clients often don’t recognize this constant, Horstmann admitted. They do notice emptiness, however. "You don’t have the structure to make the home feel like it belongs on that piece of property," he noted. "You see blank-feeling, wispy, barren areas if there’s not structural integrity from plants with interest in the winter."

Structure not only forms a landscape’s spine, but also screens eyesores after deciduous trees lose their leaves. "We try to ascertain where the structural evergreens need to be – the consistency – whether it is to block a neighbor’s house or a negative view like a telephone pole," Horstmann explained.

From there, complementary ornamentals and cool-flowering plants can fill in the void.

BRIGHTENING THE BLAHS. Berries add flecks of color to winterscapes and red or yellow twigs create stand-out structure. Seed pods and dried ornamental grasses peek out from snow drifts, and branches on bushes like Euonymus Alata form a horizontal plane that catches flakes. Some plants, like witch hazel, even will flower in February.

These features are part of the cold-weather window view, noted Kathy Pufahl, owner, Beds & Borders, Laurel, N.Y. "A view from the fireplace sitting area becomes more important in the winter, so to create a January vista, those items of interest should be placed where they’re going to be enjoyed from inside," she said.

And a landscape can’t wear too many layers in the winter. Tiers of different shrubs contrast traditional greens, and blue holly, blue juniper, gold mops and crimson barberry mix in more tones, Akehurst noted. Bark interest from yellow or red twigged dogwood trees adds another dimension to winterscapes, and sprigs of warm colors are companions to cool winter hues.

"In perennial and annual beds, we try to institute some shrubbery – especially in entrances to places where salt might damage flowers," he added. Here, benefits are two-fold: appearance and maintenance.

On the other hand, neglecting certain winterizing tasks, such as deadheading plants or cutting back ornamental grasses, can serve a landscape well during frigid months, Horstmann said. When left alone, these elements are attention-drawing landscape accessories.

"We don’t have the option to have a flowering display, so we have to look at secondary characteristics like bark or residual fruit," he noted, suggesting fruiting plants or those with persistent seed capsules – a dried flower shell – that will hang on during the winter.

"There just aren’t hundreds of plants that have berries that stay on all winter or twig interest or twig color," Ganshert explained. "But we do the best with what we have."

And if he can’t find winter-friendly plants to install, he looks elsewhere. Several clients decorate their gardens with decorative flags or windsocks to add pizzazz when plants are dormant, Ganshert noted, describing a senior center in his area that livens up its landscape with flags for holidays. "To jazz things up a bit," lighting provides sparkle to January views and is a growing add-on service for landscape contractors, he added.

WEATHER WEAR. Setting aside maintenance measures creates lingering interest in a landscape, but contractors can’t neglect plant health. Otherwise, red bark might look muddy brown and spiky grasses might wilt.

"The characteristic won’t come to its fullest unless the plant is growing well – a happy plant," Fehrenbach stressed. "There are horticultural growth factors that the plant needs, and if these aren’t taken into account, plants won’t develop their full potential."

Trees exposed to extreme winds will weaken before retaining winter interest, and grasses planted in an area that is too shady will not grow dense, structural stems, Fehrenbach said. "They sort of lop over, and they won’t make a statement and stick up over the snow like you want them to," he noted. "It has to be a vigorously growing plant to bring off the characteristics that you want."

To preserve qualities during the winter months, contractors might apply a protective spray to evergreens to seal in moisture, Fehrenbach said. Though most plants go dormant during this time of year, coatings can slow evaporation and transpiration and keep water from escaping through the bark.

Other protective tactics include tying up loose branches that might break off in high winds, and even wrapping vulnerable plants in burlap, though this unattractive practice is not so common since it scars a landscape instead of enhancing it, Akehurst said, adding that he tries to keep protective measures invisible. He applies anti-desiccant sprays to evergreen shrubs, azaleas, and "anything that will take a beating in a dry, cold winter," and is careful to hide ties that hold back weak branches.

Plants that are installed and cared for might not need extra protection. This means tuning into how a landscape is organized during the initial design phase, and considering placement so solid plants protect susceptible varieties. "If the property was planned well for exposure, you won’t have as many problems in the winter," Akehurst said.

PLANTING PLACE. Geography might be a winterscape’s most effective guard. In this case, balmy climates have an advantageous warm-temperature shield. "All the rules change when you’re talking about plants that have different foliage characteristics during winter in milder climates," Fehrenbach pointed out.

Winter in Ohio calls for snow and sleet, but Florida might not see the thermometer change at all. "In the warmer areas in California, they don’t need to target a winter planting because their spring and summer plantings will do fine," explained Linda Fox, vice president, Signature Landscape Services, Redmond, Wash.

Regions that don’t experience extreme weather present winterscape differently to clients, she added. While northern states focus on winter interest as a dormant phase of the permanent landscape installation, milder states might offer clients winter planting options similar to spring and fall changeouts, Fox noted. Flowering plants that would wither with the first freeze will survive in temperate climates, so contractors can take advantage of a larger plant palate.

Since Fox’s winter days generally stay in the 40s, she sells winter color separately, and said roughly 75 percent of her clients who install annuals sign up for three changeouts every year, including winter. Pansies, cabbage and kale paired with sedum and wintergreen offer clients a winter-fresh landscape. Fox also adds winter-blooming heather and a purple hondra, which carries a bronze-purple leaf.

"I offer winter color at the beginning of the year, and I break it down for summer, spring and fall," Fox said, explaining her clients’ options. "Customers can choose what installation they would like for the year. I also offer bulbs as a separate item and I offer maintenance on those properties to make sure they are looking good year-round."

Winter maintenance for Fox cuts down to bi-weekly visits on properties instead of every week, but still there are slugs and deadheads to manage. Leaves and storm debris also keep these maintenance visits rather busy, she said.

So, what is winterscape, exactly, if a variable such as weather determines planting success in the year’s early months?

"In different parts of the country you will get a different answer – especially in the South, because they can use annuals year round," Akehurst defined. "In the North where there is snow on the ground, they use plant material that stands out from a white background."

In most areas, winterscape doesn’t signify budding flowers or a new show of color, but instead, a continuation of the plant cycle, so contractors should educate their clients about the landscape’s changing qualities. Once homeowners recognize the various dimensions on their property as seasons change, they begin to appreciate winter interest like blooming annuals, Ganshert said.

"We try to educate people who say, ‘This is really nice and has a great flower,’" he said. "We point out that it also has twig color or berry production in the fall. They might not realize how important that is until they’ve lived there a couple of years."

Clients who visualize mature plants in the landscape design and look beyond their flowers and foliage will appreciate the qualities they lend to their properties during the winter, Fehrenbach added.

"People are growing in their understanding of plant material, and they are more understanding of what is happening on their landscapes," he observed. "This goes back to educating clients about what they should be looking for and what should be built into the plan that they can appreciate."