Season 2 • Episode 1 - January 18, 2023

A lot of people say that the winter garden is boring.
The cold rains, the lack of daylight and associated lack
of warmth all signal a cold and boring garden. To prove
everyone wrong we stopped by the
Al’s Garden and Home in Sherwood (503-726-1162) to
talk with Aaron and see some plants that will provide
color, texture, structure and even fragrance for the
winter garden. He also talked about planting in the
winter. As long as the ground is not frozen solid, you
can still plant! He recommends that you follow the same
rules for planting in the winter as you do the rest of
the year. Dig a nice sized hole, amend the soil, water
well and even use a transplant fertilizer. By following
those simple rules and by planting now you can assure
yourself of a beautiful garden next winter.
We started with a lavender plant. These are well known
for their wonderful bloom stalks and intoxicating
fragrance during the early summer, but they are also
great in the winter garden too. The evergreen foliage
can brighten up your garden and it is also fragrant if
you brush it. Next were ferns. These are a favorite
native in the Northwest garden, with many of us having
sword ferns or deer ferns in our garden. But there are
so many varieties that can add a lot of different
textures in between your other plants. These were
smaller varieties and quite dainty. We featured the
Autumn fern which gets a nice orange color in the fall
and then will turn green again in the spring. You can
keep these looking nice by cutting off the old weathered
fronds in the late winter and letting the newer green
fronds grow up to replace them.
Grasses
are also popular in the fall and winter garden. For most
varieties, they are simply tall green clumps during most
of the summer, but then in the fall a lot of them change
color and can also add a soft texture to the hard edges
of your garden. We looked at the Orange New Zealand
Sedge with its wonderful fall color still showing. Some
gardeners will cut their grasses back in the late fall,
but they can add a great backdrop to your garden
especially on those windy days. Wait until early spring
to cut them back and they will be fine. If you have an
evergreen grass like ‘Evergold’ you can just pull out
the dead or brown leaves and let the rest stay there.
The new growth will fill in the bare spots when the
weather warms up. Aaron also showed us how you can pair
up a darker grass like Black Mondo grass with the
brighter Evergold to really show the contrast. These
smaller grasses will also work well in containers for
year-round contrast.
The next great plants on the table were the hellebores.
These are old garden favorites with a twist. There are
newer varieties coming out every year and that means new
bright colors for your winter garden. The flowers
traditionally would face down when the plant blooms, but
the newer varieties are bred with the flowers facing
more upright so you can enjoy them in the garden. In
addition to the flowers, a lot of varieties have
interesting foliage as well. Now is a good time to cut
back the foliage to expose those new blooms. The older
foliage can start to look pretty bad in the late winter
and cutting off the leaves will not damage the plant
since it will send up new leaves later this spring. Just
be careful to avoid those new flowers when you do the
cutting.
Ryan pointed out that the flower blooms of the perennial
hellebores looks great but there are other plants that
bring interest to your garden through their berries.
Wintergreen is a low growing ground cover, but it has
some colorful berries and leaves that can brighten up
those lower dark areas in your garden. They can have red
or pink berries and even variegated foliage that will
turn a bronze color in the fall and winter. The berries
are cool for another reason too. They have a nice mint
flavor and the
leaves can be used to make a tea. Another nice plant is
the underused epimedium. This is a family of plants that
have different characteristics depending on the one you
choose, but they all are known for their wonderful
dainty blooms. The best way to observe these blooms is
to cut all the foliage back to the ground in the late
fall to late winter. The new, orchid-like blooms rise
above the ground with new foliage following. Some people
keep the foliage until the last minute so they can see
the distinctive patterns on the leaves. We then moved to
euphorbia. This is a huge family of plants that includes
the tender poinsettia to the more hardy varieties. The
ones for your outdoor garden can have great variegated
foliage and wonderful, but unusual bloom stalks. We saw
‘Ascot Rainbow’, with reddish stems and multicolored
variegated foliage and ‘Glacier blue’ with a bright
cream colored foliage. These stay much shorter than the
larger Euphorbia wulfenii. The next plants we looked at
were the heucheras. These have become quite popular in
recent years. It is because of the foliage. The
different leaf colors with patterns of different colored
veins in the leaves are incredible. There are also
flower stalks and they are not huge, but are still
interesting. The common name of ‘coral bells’ gives a
hint of the flowers as they form long strings of
bell-shaped flowers. A taller grass-like plant was next.
The phormium, or New Zealand Flax, are a hardy plant in
your winter garden. Some have bright leaves, some have
dark leaves, some are upright and some are weeping, some
can get really tall (over six feet tall) and some can
stay shorter (a foot or two). The New Zealand Flax
doesn’t really need pruning, as you can just cut out the
ugly looking stalks, but it does need well-drained soil
to thrive. We saw the green and gold ‘Yellow Wave’ and
the deep blood red ‘Amazing Red’.
The next plant can be outdoors and/or indoors and can
get really big if you don’t keep an eye on it. It’s the
Fatsia. We had a Fatsia ‘Spider’s Web’ to look at with
its variegated foliage. This one likes morning sun which
will help bring out its variegation. Ryan found a couple
more plants that were actually blooming right now, we
started with the English Daisy. When spring starts to
get close you will find these starting to pop up. These
groundcover blooms will continue through the summer,
with fewer blooms, but they still will look good. Other
early bloomers are the pansies and violas. These are
from the same family and will take a beating and still
continue to bloom. We’ve seen them completely frozen in
the morning and then looking great in the afternoon when
the temps get warm again. They are tough! They are
‘winter blooming’, but they will bloom all season long
and will reseed if conditions are right. In addition to
the bright colors, they also have a slight sweet
fragrance. In the later winter and early spring you will
also see the hardy cyclamen starting to bloom. They
usually have the bloom appear first, followed by the
foliage. It is a nice surprise in the early spring
garden. There are a couple types of cyclamen. The hardy,
which tends to have a smaller bloom, and the tender
florists cyclamen which is an indoor plant with larger
blooms. Bergenia was next. It has a nice bronze colored
foliage right now in the cold days of winter, followed
by bright flower spikes in the spring, and a return to
green foliage in the summer again. Some varieties can
get huge and are called Elephant Ears due to the big
leaves. Sedums are also great ground cover types of
winter plants. The ‘Dragon’s Blood’ sedum was on the
table and it showed how you can use a small plant like
this to fill in the blank parts of your winter garden.
Be sure to pick a good variety for your winter garden as
some will disappear and die back in the cold. Once they
are established they can be very drought tolerant as
well!
We took a break and returned to talk about a few more
plants.
This time we were looking at broad leaved evergreens,
needled evergreens and dormant trees known for their
branch and trunk structures. The first one was the
contorted filbert. A variety that a lot of people look
for is the ‘Harry Lauder Walking Stick’ or Corkscrew
Hazel. These are very slow growing and have twisty,
bendy clusters of branches. If you shine a light on them
in the winter garden, they can be quite striking. They
even have signature catkins, or flowers, that show up in
the spring, though you won’t get any nuts from the tree
later in the season. Judy then pointed out the evergreen
magnolias, Cape Harris and Teddybear. These are great
small trees in the garden. They have the great white,
fragrant flower in the late spring and summer, but right
now they have the glossy leaves and an interesting
underside to the leaf that makes them a great addition
to the winter garden.
Camellias
are a favorite in the Northwest garden. If you plant
different species you can have color from October or
November to May or June. Sasanqua camellias are blooming
now and Japonica, with their bigger and showier blooms
are great for the spring garden. There are also hybrids
that can bridge the seasons to bring blooms to your
garden. One that we love is the Yuletide camellia. This
one starts blooming around Christmas time with red
petals and bright yellow centers, perfect for the
holiday season. Next we found a bright gold pine at the
back of the table, the Chief Joseph. This was found in
the Wallowa mountains of Oregon and it is a slow growing
pine that is green in the summer and then when the
colder temperatures roll in it turns to a bright golden
color. Another pine that we had on the table was a Scots
Pine, that is more of a ground cover and only gets about
two feet tall when it matures. It really spreads out and
covers a large area if you are looking for something
that is low maintenance and strikingly beautiful. If you
are looking for something colorful and short, then the
Mugo Pine ‘Carsten’s Wintergold’ might be the one for
you. This one stays short and forms a bun shape, and
turns a wonderful gold color in the winter! Mahonias
should be familiar to Oregonians. Some varieties are
known as Oregon Grapes and are the state flower of
Oregon. They are not grapes, but get their name from the
purple berries that form on the plant and are a favorite
of native birds and wildlife. The one we saw was a
variety called ‘Charity’. It gets large stalks of golden
flowers in the winter which are a favorite of
hummingbirds and bees. Its ‘holly-like’ leaves create an
interesting foliage in your garden during the winter
months. Aaron then pointed out a blueberry next to the
mahonia. This variety, ‘Sunshine Blue’, keeps its leaves
in the winter, unlike a lot of the other blueberry
varieties. It also is a great berry for the home
gardener as it is covered with wonderful fruit during
the mid-summer months.
We were approaching the end of the table and that
included a variety of Euonymus. This one was evergreen
with the new growth a bright golden color. It will get
even more gold with more sun in the winter. We then went
to an evergreen hemlock that had variegated foliage.
This was a newer variety with the newer growth having a
white tip to it. It will turn back to a green in the
summer, but as soon as the temperatures drop you can
expect the new foliage to go back to white again. At the
back of the table was a bunch of twigs. Actually it was
a dogwood called ‘Midwinter Fire’ and it may be
non-descript in the summer, but in the winter it has
fiery orange and red branches that really stand out in
your garden. We’ve seen them in gardens and they truly
stop traffic in the winter! Next to the pretty sticks
was a plant that will surprise you. Sarcococca, or sweet
box, will stay low to the ground and in the winter it
has tiny blooms that are very hard to find, but you can
sure smell them! This plant will have people wandering
your garden looking for the source of the wonderful
fragrance. It is an evergreen and during the summer it
can easily get lost among your other garden plants. But
make no mistake, you’ll find it in the winter! Just
follow your nose. Another bright plant in the winter
garden is the variegated boxwood. It is like its popular
cousin, the evergreen boxwood, but this one has the
showy leaves that you will love in your garden.
As we were finishing up we saw a couple of Cryptomerias.
Variety ‘Mushroom’ turns a dark bronze color with soft
foliage in the winter, but returns to a bright green in
the summer. Variety ‘Elegans’ is similar, with a
striking fall and winter color, turning to green in the
summer. The foliage is very feathery and soft to the
touch. A great winter blooming shrub is the witch hazel.
These have little clusters of blooms that look like
shredded coconut on the length of the bare branches.
They have bloom colors in the reds, yellows and oranges,
with green leaves in the summer that turn into bright
fall colors at the end of the season. Edgeworthia, or
Chinese Paperbush was next and this one is special. It
is called paperbush because some cultures used it to
make paper, but it is known for something even more
special. The pendulous blooms on this shrub are just
showing up now and they are very fragrant! They look
like balls of bright yellow or orange flowers and are a
showcase in the mid-winter garden. Ryan found one more
plant at the back of the table and that was a pencil
thin Yew. This one stays nice and narrow so it can fit
in a tight spot in your garden, a foot wide and eight
feet tall at maturity. It too, will turn a bright gold
in the winter and returns to a nice green in the summer.
We finished by talking about now being the best time to
shop your local garden center to fill your winter
garden. You can find the plants now that will really
shine next winter after they have had a summer to
acclimate to your garden. We recommend that you stop by
any of the four Al’s Garden and Home locations in the
Portland metro area, or check with your own local,
independent garden center.

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