Winter Interest in Your Garden

Winter doesn’t have to look bleak. By adopting a few simple strategies, you can have beautiful color and interest in your yard ALL year long!

By adding just a few items of interest, your yard will be stunning even in the bleakest month of January. To give you an idea of different plant ideas, I’ve stared and labeled all the pictures from my yard below. For your reference, my yard has a winter hardiness zone of 4-5.

First, attracting a few birds and wild life will do wonders for your yard this winter. Not only are the fun to look for and watch, they can also be beneficial to your landscape. One way to attract wildlife is by making my simple Mini Birdseed wreaths. {here + here}

Other ways to attract birds and wildlife, is with berries. There are so many shrubs/tree that have persistent winter berries. Did you know robins won’t eat bird seed? But they do love to feast on left over berries.

Winter Interest in Your Garden

*Pyrcantha

Winter Interest in Your Garden

*Centurion Crabapple

Winter Interest in Your Garden

*Flowering Dogwood Tree

*Yew

Winter Interest in Your Garden

*Juniper

*Crabapple

We had a flock of robins move through our yard in late winter last year picking our Crabapple trees clean! They must have just been arriving and were famished after a long flight north.

Next, don’t cut down interesting seed heads and ornamental grasses. Not only do they add interest, texture, and sound to your winter garden, the birds will use the grasses as cover or for nest making come spring.

*Ornamental grasses

Winter Interest in Your Garden

*Annabelle Hydrangea seed head

Winter Interest in Your Garden

*Acer seed

Add a late winter bloomer. Who knew that a shrub could bloom in the dead of winter here in Utah!?

*Hamamelis (Witch Hazel)

Next, be sure to look for and add trees/shrubs with interesting bark. Colored bark, exfoliating bark, deeply textured bark etc….

Winter Interest in Your Garden

*Red Twig Dogwood

Winter Interest in Your Garden

*Seven Sons Tree

Lastly, Add color with evergreen trees, shrubs, ground covers and vines. Often times, when people think of evergreens, they only think of “pine” trees. There are also many broadleaf evergreen trees and shrubs that are beautiful and add so much texture to a landscape.

Winter Interest in Your Garden