What Strategies Do Landscape Designers Use to Maintain Year-Round Garden Interest?
Home & Garden Insider
What Strategies Do Landscape Designers Use to Maintain Year-Round Garden Interest?
Ever wondered how to make a garden captivating throughout the year? The Owner of Monson Lawn & Landscaping shares a key strategy to utilize container plants for winter interest, while the Landscape Designer / Owner emphasizes focusing on foliage, bark, and structure. This Q&A blog post gathers insights from seven leading experts, providing diverse approaches to maintain garden allure year-round. From the first tip to the last, these professionals offer actionable advice to keep your garden thriving no matter the season.
- Utilize Container Plants for Winter Interest
- Implement the Forest Edge Principle
- Create a Living Tapestry
- Incorporate Winter Interest Elements
- Use Plants with Unique Dormant Colors
- Start with Native Plants
- Focus on Foliage, Bark, and Structure
Utilize Container Plants for Winter Interest
The key to year-round interest in your plants requires planting annuals and perennials, as well as doing some container planting. If you're as far north as I am, in Zones 3-5, and if you want year-round plants, you'll need some big windows or a greenhouse. However, higher zone numbers can keep the right plants going in their windows. The strategy is to have a few container plants that live indoors for the winter but go out and become part of the landscaping again each spring. You'll need to research which plants are hardy in your area to make this work.
Implement the Forest Edge Principle
One powerful strategy I use to create year-round interest in gardens is implementing the "Forest Edge" principle, inspired by the dynamic ecosystems found at woodland boundaries. This approach involves layering plants of varying heights, textures, and seasonal interest to mimic the natural progression from forest floor to canopy.
For example, I'll combine low-growing, evergreen ground covers like Epimedium with mid-height shrubs such as Viburnum, and anchor the design with small trees like Dogwoods or Japanese Maples. This layering not only provides visual interest throughout the year but also creates diverse habitats for wildlife. In one client's garden, we transformed a bland suburban lot into a mini-ecosystem that showcases spring blossoms, summer foliage, autumn colors, and winter bark textures.
The result was a 40 percent increase in bird species visiting the garden and a landscape that captivates in every season. By embracing this forest-inspired diversity, we can create resilient, low-maintenance gardens that evolve and surprise throughout the year, much like a natural woodland edge.
Create a Living Tapestry
The key is building a living tapestry where plants are always in motion, providing texture, color, and height—ensuring that the garden isn't just something to admire during peak seasons, but something to experience and engage with all year long.
What makes this strategy powerful is the balance between structure and surprise. Ornamental grasses provide structure and varying heights, ensuring that there's always something visually interesting happening. They offer a wide range of colors, from golden hues to deep reds, and they hold their form even as the seasons shift, giving the garden life when everything else is dormant.
Fall foliage is another key player. Growing up in the forest, I've always been captivated by the spectacular colors that trees offer during autumn months. It's nature's own display of brilliance, and by incorporating a variety of trees and shrubs, I can ensure that the garden puts on its own seasonal performance, offering something new as the leaves change.
The secret is designing for both the obvious and the subtle. Small trees, shrubs, and grasses create the foundation, while garden structures and lighting bring the final layer of year-round appeal. Finally, thoughtful use of lighting in the darker months keeps the garden alive, casting interesting shadows and highlighting the textures that remain, reminding the homeowner of the beauty that will return as the seasons cycle.
Incorporate Winter Interest Elements
Adding winter interest in your garden is easily achieved in spring, summer, and fall. It's the winter months that leave people guessing. As a professional landscape designer, I advise you to use a mix of the following throughout your garden to ensure winter interest:
Evergreens provide a solid structure for snow to settle onto, and they hold their leaves all winter to make a dense, green shape in the landscape. Ornamental grasses and other perennials, like sedum, hold up to light snow and show off their unique structure when coated. Beneficial insects also appreciate it when you leave your perennials up all winter so that they have a home to live in. Lastly, hydrangea blossoms are best kept intact all winter. The blossoms are often on strong stems that are ideal for adding texture to the garden on a larger scale than most perennials during the winter months in snowy climates.
Use Plants with Unique Dormant Colors
I enjoy using an array of plants to ensure I have interest in every month of the year. This includes blooms that come up every month from April to September, fall color in October and November, and evergreens or foliage color that offers something during the winter months. One thing I like to do to add interest in the winter is to use plants with unique dormant colors (red-twig dogwoods), evergreens, and ornamental grasses. I suggest that customers do not cut their ornamental grasses back until early spring (March) to add some movement and texture to the winter landscape. Layering plants based on color, bloom time, and size is one of my favorite parts of the job.
Start with Native Plants
As a landscape architect, it is a difficult question to answer in a general way because it varies substantially depending on the bioregion and geographic location of the garden. That said, the primary strategy to create year-round interest should always start with a list of native plants and an understanding of their traits. Native plants, to any geographic location and microclimate, will tend to be resilient through the seasons and years.
Focus on Foliage, Bark, and Structure
Focus on foliage, bark, and structure rather than blooms. Flowers are great, but on most plants, they are short-lived. And the nursery trade is so flower-focused that you will end up with at least three seasons of blooms without even trying.
But if you also include plants with colorful foliage, interesting bark, or a striking structure, then you can have a truly year-round garden.
Here in Portland, I like to use plants like Blue Fescue, Black Mondo Grass, and Sundance Mock Orange for the color of their foliage. Manzanita, Dwarf Strawberry Tree, and Paperbark Maples all have bark with color and texture. And Fineline Buckthorn, Oregon Green Austrian Pine, and Vine Maple bring structure or shapes that stand out in winter when blooms are scarce.
