January and February are the best months to plan a landscape design. They are also the months you should plan on your garden being its most beautiful. A garden beautiful in February is typically beautiful all year, but a garden stunning in May is commonly pretty for one season. Designing for winter beauty may include the use of evergreen groundcovers to provide lush carpeting and a few deciduous shrubs and trees with showy stem color. Urns and benches are pleasant focal points while the exposed, shocking shape of a contorted filbert tree adds drama. Evergreen tropical foliage and blossoms of hellebores splash color but, be daring! Prune off the hellebore foliage leaving only blooms.
Lawns and pathways, which appear bolder in winter, will enhance the perfection of winter’s garden with the help of japonica’s evergreen foliage dripping in colorful blossoms.
Choose urns and pots that are so fabulous they don’t ever need to be planted. I ran out of time several years ago to fool with annuals in pots and I’ve enjoyed the time saved and the money too. Benches should be chosen for form and function. Too often garden benches are chosen for their function and at an obviously excellent price, ignoring completely the form. What you’ll see is a garden devastated with the burden of having a cheap, ugly, uncomfortable bench.
January and February are good months to move established plantings. Be sure the plants have been watered a couple of days before they are moved and then watered again when they are replanted.
The only plant I caution that will possibly up-and-die-on-you is the seductively fragrant daphne. She blooms in February regardless of snow or ice and is a beacon toward spring.
Will you need a landscape architect or a landscape designer to plan your landscape design? It’s all about drainage. If you have drainage issues on your property you will want to hire a landscape architect. They are degreed and licensed for their specialty of moving soil and water. If drainage is not an issue, a landscape designer should be hired. They specialize, some are degreed some are not, in the correct placement of plant materials around a home or business. Some landscape architects are also landscape designers, but no landscape designer can call themselves a landscape architect without a degree and licensing. This is a simplification of the two professions but a starting point for you to realize what the differences are. You wouldn’t hire your dermatologist to perform knee replacement surgery. It’s just as important to hire the right professional for your landscape.
You’ll discover that a garden designed to be beautiful in January and February is also going to be a garden requiring far less maintenance year round than one designed to be most beautiful in April-May-June. I know this is counterintuitive, but it’s a fact I’ve learned as a degreed landscape designer that has logged over a thousand designs, several months and many miles through the best gardens North America and Europe have to offer. No, in all honesty, knowledge about designing specifically for a beautiful garden in winter has come from the changes I’ve made in my own garden the past 20 years and maintaining it with my own hands. I didn’t listen to expert advice 20 years ago about designing my garden for winter. Why? The human garden archetype wants to design for spring and I will admit to being human. And with the changes my body has made over 20 years, low maintenance is mandatory. My mind has also changed greatly over 20 years as it is far more demanding of beauty, but blessedly it is more desirous of simplicity. Yes, I walked through the magical garden gate of designing for a beautiful garden in winter. Magical because I know and live with a beautiful, low maintenance, winter garden that uplifts mind, body and spirit all year.
JANUARY
Blooms, Stem Color & Berries
Hellebores, Crocus, Camellia, Daphne, January Jasmine, Loquat, Tea Olive, Wintersweet, Witchhazel, Virginia Sweetspire, Crepe Myrtle, Aucuba, Dogwood, Holly, Mahonia, Nandina
Flowers & Seeds
Sow seeds of Peony Poppies, Sweet Peas, Larkspur and Batchelor Button. Perennials can be moved.
Shrubs
May be transplanted now. Do not prune spring flowering shrubs. Hollies can be pruned.
Trees
Plant, transplant, prune as needed.
Sprays
Volck oil can be sprayed on days above 40f to prevent insect problems later in the year.
Miscellaneous
Clear away the last of the fallen leaves. Spread fresh mulch, no more than 2.5” thick to prevent weeds and conserve moisture. Top dress perennial and shrub borders with 1” of rotted manure or compost. Don’t place on crowns of plants.
FEBRUARY
Blooms, Stem Color & Berries
Crocus, Daffodil, Snowdrop, Flowering Almond, Camellia, Forsythia, January Jasmine, Quince, Viburnum Tinus, Mahonia, Nandina, Helleborus, Daphne, Rosemary, Sarcoccoca, Carolina Jessamine.
Flowers & Seeds
Cool season annuals, Snapdragons, Violas, Candytuft, Wallflowers can be sown in their beds. Plant roses and hardy lily bulbs now.
Shrubs
Continue transplanting. Mophead hydrangea can be pruned to shape. Prune butterfly bush down to 18”.
Trees
Continue planting. Prune fruit trees and fig bushes now. Sprays Volck oil can be sprayed on all shrubs, trees, perennials.
Miscellaneous
Do not whack off your crepe myrtles. It is crepe murder, prune to shape if needed.
Tara Dillard hosted her own TV show on CBS and has been designing gardens for 20 years. She’s author of The Garden View, Beautiful By Design and other garden books. Tara is a motivational garden lecturer nationally and locally at corporate and garden venues.
Visit Tara at www.taradillard.com
