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Plant Life By Valerie Easton
No Lyin' In WinterWhy abandon the garden when we need its pleasures most?
WHEN I BEGAN again with a new garden year before last, I decided it was going to be a summer garden. Just because we can garden year 'round in our climate doesn't mean we have to, right? I wanted a break from the intensity of plants clamoring for care year-round. I was tired of having to gear up in rubber boots and clammy gloves to work outdoors on cold, wet and windy days. I was looking forward to a manicure that might actually last longer than 24 hours, and finishing a New Yorker in the week it's delivered. When else might a gardener achieve such feats except in the dead of winter? The idea of limiting my gardening life to the warmer months was also a strategy for dealing with decreased garden space. Many choices needed to be made in planning this new mini-garden, and crossing the season of nastiest weather off my agenda was the easiest of them. And yet . . . and yet . . . You probably know what comes next. Turns out my gleeful plan to mulch and forget it was nothing more than a fleeting idea. I sorely missed rushing out in the rain to cut a fragrant twig, an evergreen bough, a winter-blooming iris. My internal clock was disrupted without familiar anticipations such as the swelling of witch hazel buds, the falling of camellia petals, the first snowdrop pushing up through the soil. I felt sadly disconnected from nature during the darkest days of the year when I most needed its reassuring rhythms. My essentials for the season • Witch hazel (Hamamelis species). Spreading, vase-shaped deciduous shrubs or small trees with good fall color and highly fragrant, spidery flowers on bare branches in January.
• Strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo 'Compacta'). One of our prettiest small evergreens, growing only 6 to 8 feet with narrow leaves and handsome cinnamon-colored bark. In late autumn and early winter, white flowers bloom just as the round, bumpy fruit ripens and turns vivid shades of orange and red.
• Viburnum x bodnantense 'Pink Dawn.' A tall, deciduous shrub with pleated leaves and rosy-pink, sweetly smelling flowers that keep on blooming through the winter. It also sports blue fruit in late summer and scarlet autumn foliage.
• Camellia sasanqua. These lax evergreens are smaller than their more familiar Camellia japonica cousins, and they bloom far earlier. Espalier them against a fence or wall to enjoy their glossy foliage and voluptuous blossoms from October into January.
• Sweet box (Sarcococca ruscifolia). Evergreen, shade-loving, small shrubs with shiny leaves, red fruit and — in January and February — masses of tiny white flowers so strongly scented that the whole garden smells sweetly of vanilla. So now I'm trying to figure out which plants deliver the most winter pleasure per square inch of ground, with a minimum of care. I'm shopping for a few essential winter stalwarts, yet remain determined not to overcrowd my garden. I'm also resolved to remove myself from gardening cares long enough to read at least several fat novels before March. So only sturdy, non-fussy plants are possibilities for this relapse into all-season gardening. It's easy to squeeze in a few hellebores, plant some crocus, snowdrops and the lovely little winter-blooming iris (Iris unguicularis). But I'm cautiously adding some shrubs to clothe the garden from the ground up. As you choose your own essential winter plants, check out the possibilities in the box here for durable plants with texture, fragrant flowers and fruit showy enough to attract birds as well as humans. Seems some plants are as essential to a gardener's winter well-being as fleece-lined boots, a hat with a brim and those clammy, rain-repellant gloves.
Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net.
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