Winter Gardening For the Disinclined

Sometimes I wish I could find a cave and hibernate through the dark, gloomy months because I get so blue.  

Is it possible to learn to love this season? My gardening friends suggested that making winter containers helped them embrace this time of year so I thought I’d give it a try even though I had my doubts. Just yesterday, it seems, the pots were brimming with blue larkspurs, yellow daisies and sweet-smelling peacock orchids. Now they’ll feature cut branches, pine needles and dead flowers? 

I wasn’t even sure how to get started so I hit the phones.  “Well, what’s in your landscape? You want it to tie your property together but in a decorative way,” says my sister Kathy, a garden designer who lives in Greenwich.   “So, it’s making a flower arrangement in a container?” “Yes, but giant-sized. Let people see it from the road, catch a glimpse when they’re zooming by.” 

“What kind of container?”  “Something that won’t break, like concrete, metal or wood,” my bossy sister reminded me before she hung up. I walked down to a 60-foot Douglas fir at the edge of my driveway. The tree seemed to have laid her lower branches on a stone wall as if to say “here, try these.” I cut a few as my eyes started to adjust to a landscape that I’ve never really examined before. It was different. Purple coneflowers had morphed into jolly black polka dots.  The mountain laurels were holding bits of snow in their tiny fist-like leaves. Some of their branches reminded me of jazz notes flying into the air. Frankly, I’d never even noticed how many shades of great subtle color there are right now.  I was glad I hadn’t cleaned up too well because there was plenty to snip.

Bo Corre, a floral designer from Sweden, told me to pay attention to textures and shapes. She loved the soft curvy seedpods on grasses because they reminded her of waves. The staghorn sumacs, plentiful along the road, were a deep wine color and had an amazing furry texture like koala bears while poppy seeds were in a silky gray casing. Some seed heads move gracefully, other make a tiny rattle.  “Nature is a big jewelry box just waiting for you,” she said. “But you don’t want to make anything too monochromatic and boring – find different textures to make it work.”

Unless you are doing a simple tone on tone arrangement of birch branches which could be gorgeous, I realized. (Throw Agnes Martin’s name around if anybody asks). 

I wanted a little more for my collection and settled on berries, because Grace Kennedy, an artist and garden designer in the Hudson Valley, told me this is one way to bring movement to an arrangement. It sounded like an interesting idea. I don’t like anything static, she added. “It’s the birds that make the movement.  You want to see cardinals? Use juniper because they love those berries,” she’d said. She loves any kind of berry as well as seed pods that swoosh in the wind. 

Later that day, I pushed confers branches, beautiful fawn and dark green magnolia leaves, soft brown seed heads, and red Ilex berries into an old stone container still filled with last summer’s potting soil and put it on the terrace.  The next morning nuthatches and chickadees were dancing around the arrangement in search of treats. They’re the best critics – they love it! I think I’ll go out and make them another.