Wonderful Winter Landscape Ideas
With creative winter landscape ideas, beautiful yards and gardens are no longer just for summer and spring. Landscape designers and other experts offer a number of terrific ideas to help gardeners make their homes just as attractive in the winter as in the warmer seasons.
Sturdy, tall evergreens are perhaps the best place to start. Evergreen shrubs and hedges keep their leaves and color during the coldest months. If you live in a region that gets a lot of snow, choosing trees and shrubs that are tall will have the added visual benefit of standing out in the otherwise white winter landscape.
Winter landscape trees
For trees, look for varieties that have colorful or dark bark and decent-sized branches. The bark will stand out, and the branches will catch the snow, resulting in interesting and eye-catching shapes. Trees and shrubs that produce colorful berries are also a plus, adding not only beauty but attracting birds and other wildlife to your winter landscape.
Among trees, birch and Canadian hemlocks are good choices for many winter landscaping designs.
Birch trees can grow to 80 feet tall or more and have wonderful fall foliage that turns bright shades of yellow. But perhaps the most notable feature of birch trees is the bark that begins to peel off the tree as the cold weather sets in. In some varieties, such as the paper birch, the bark that peels off is thin as paper and, in some cases, almost as white.
Canadian hemlocks are classified as evergreen conifers. This slow-growth tree can reach 80 feet or taller, with a nice, full spread. They are fragrant trees and grow in the shape of pyramid, or cone. The pretty bark is often reddish brown, which works very well in winter landscape ideas.
Shrubs for a winter landscape
As for shrubs, holly bushes have long been a gardener’s favorite. These evergreen shrubs combine nice shapes, interesting leaves and bright green year-round color. One well-known variety is Christmas holly, whose bright red berries set against dark green leaves makes it perhaps the most popular plants of the Yuletide season.
Another popular shrub, the American cranberry bush, is well-known for its edible red berries that attract people and wildlife. American cranberry bush grows up to 5 feet tall. In fall, its foliage turns to a beautiful red-purple color.
False cypress, shrubby dogwood and creeping juniper are also great winter landscape shrubs, experts say.
These are just a handful of the beautiful winter landscape plants available to gardeners. With the wide variety of plants that are available, landscape designers and garden experts say homeowners need not fear the onset of cold weather, but rather view it as an opportunity to design a wonderful winter landscape.