Tis the season for outdoor folly and snow flurries!
To envelope the latest winter trends in outdoor design, Myron Greer shares ideas on putting seasonal flair into one’s home yard, garden or even mixed-use parking area.
The vision starts with a few basic treasures of winter horticulture. Winter berries are bright eye candy on shrubs and trees. Look towards varieties of evergreen holly, deciduous holly, American beautyberry, and mahonia. Lenten roses and sweet box shrubs are top choices as well. Greer loves to repurpose dried ornamental grasses by leaving unpruned as they provide winter food for birds as well as promote architectural interest.
Raking up fall leaf remnants exposes interesting ground cover plantings such as jasmine, hellebores and ajugas. It’s especially important to prune back untidy perennials or herbaceous plants. Greer suggests pocket planting of white or light pastel colors of pansies in mass to fill in empty places in the winter garden. He adds, “Containers with winter annuals and center evergreens are particularly interesting for winter gardens.”
Outdoor lighting can create dramatic effects. Highlighting deciduous trees with their eclectic bark patterns is especially eye catching on trees such as river birch, paperbark maples, Japanese Maples and red twig dogwoods.
To bring the outdoors inside, cuttings from the winter garden can be used to decorate or create an organic feel in the living areas. Recommended plants for clippings are camellias, holly, yew, dried ornamental grasses, magnolia and hellebores.
Don’t let the chill of the season keep you inside. Greer loves to utilize the outdoors by creating living/entertaining space. Front yards can double as parking on smaller urban lots. It’s welcoming to have an outdoor entertaining patio with fireplaces or fire pits that are backed by large evergreens that envelope a small conversation space.
Greer shares his thoughts on the latter, “Outdoor architecture spaces give the sense of secluded warmth and togetherness of favorite friends and family; especially during a pandemic!”
If new to landscape architecture. Greer advises not to be shy on finding vision.
He recommends, “Look into local higher education classes in design or horticulture like CPCC or even County Extension Services or County Master Gardeners classes to explore the industry first to see if that triggers more than just wanting to be gardener. Visit as many nurseries, state and local botanical gardens to gain inspiration. Take long walks and observe and record mental notes of every relationship in natural and inanimate objects as possible.”
