by Lydia Holley December 21, 2020
Evergreens are the backbone of a winter garden and lend structure to a summer garden filled with colorful blooms. In the winter, evergreens also add color, interest, and soothes the restless spirit of the gardener longing for spring.
The secret to adding evergreens to your garden is to place them so their winter forms do not look random or disorderly. Place them in some type of pattern for the most pleasing look. Another place to consider placing evergreens is in the corners of your garden, or at the beginning and end of a walkway. You may choose to plant evergreens near your
front door for a consistent look. Once you begin to add evergreens to your landscape, you might not ever want to stop.
For additional interest, choose evergreens which bloom or form berries. We covered some of those plants in the last two installments of this series. In addition to the plants already covered, consider using dwarf yaupon holly, azalea, blue rug juniper, boxwood, mahonia, euonymus, yucca, agave, abelia, pieris, heavenly bamboo, and aucuba.
Evergreen groundcovers include liriope, creeping phlox, candytuft, periwinkle, creeping jenny, ajuga, sweet flag, cast iron plant, carex, blue fescue, Japanese holly fern, autumn fern, and sedum.
Some evergreens are purchased mostly for their flowers, but still lend a soothing green to the winter garden. These include agapanthus, sea thrift, crossvine, dianthus, gardenia, Carolina jessamine, lavender, Texas sage, mock orange, and Stoke’s aster. Many old garden roses and even some modern ones stay evergreen.
It would be easy to design a landscape using only evergreens, but you will probably want a bit of other interest just to indicate the changing of the seasons. That will be covered in the next, final installment of this series. For now, walk around your garden and evaluate its winter look. This is the perfect time to determine whether you need additional evergreens placed in your garden and where they should be added.
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