Adding color to your winter landscape
Welcome to winter! For those who like to have a colorful yard this time of year to ward off the wintertime blues, you know that choices for winter flowers are nowhere near the selections for spring and summer. But with a little help from your local garden store, you can have some very nice-looking beds or containers to make your landscape stand out.
Just adding colorful pots can be a big addition if you don’t want to replant seasonally. For example, clay terra cotta pots can be fun if you make it a decorating event with family or friends.
All plants will take full sun in the wintertime, so that is not something you have to question at this time of the year. In the summer, you may have to rearrange them, but that is six months away.
Pansies and violas are the go-to flowers for providing the most color and pop during colder months. Everyone loves big pansies with ‘faces’, continually creating new color patterns and varieties. Try the newer trailing pansies for a nice hanging basket. Violets have almost as broad a color pallet, but with smaller heads and more winter hardiness.
Coral bells, or hucherella, are reliable perennials that performs well in the winter. Small and mounding, this in one that come summer, you would have to move to a morning sun location. From almost black and lime green to fire red and purples, coral bells colors are amazing.
Other winter flowers include dianthus, dusty miller and spurge-type euphorbias.
Herbs also are great additions as fillers for winter mixes. You will not get as much color selection – mainly greens with some white or yellow variegation – but many of them scoff at frost. Rosemary, chives or eucalyptus are good choices for height. Thyme, savory and oregano are good for trailing. And sage, rumex, germander and parsley make good fillers. Plus, all of these are edible.
About the Author
Tina Clark is the owner and president of Carolina Garden World in Spartanburg, SC. A native of Erie, Pennsylvania, Tina found Upstate South Carolina in a job move then found her way to Spartanburg Community College where she completed a degree in horticulture. A frequent presenter at area civic organizations, garden clubs and schools, Tina is sustainability certified and organizes a free Sustainability Day event for the community at Carolina Garden World each year in celebration of Earth Day.
