When you are designing your garden for winter interest, think of yourself as a set designer. Unlike spring and summer, when the garden goes through many scene changes, the winter stage does not change rapidly. The overall composition is a static one, but it will not be boring if you incorporate the basic principles of design: form, line, color, repetition an...

I have always admired bloodtwig dogwood (Cornus sanguinea) for its colorful contribution to the winter garden. During a recent visit to Tower Hill, I fell in love with a new cultivar of this wonderful plant – ‘Midwinter Fire’. This outstanding ornamental shrub features stems that are yellow at the base, igniting to shades of...

Hellebores have fascinated me ever since I saw huge swaths of them blooming in a Washington, DC botanic garden 12 years ago. I started with a few plants in one garden bed, and as they faithfully returned year after year, I added more varieties, began dividing my own plants, and growing on seedlings in nursery beds. At this time of year, though, I realize that I...

Garden Blogger's Bloom Day was started six years ago by the May Dreams Gardens blog. On the 15th of every month, garden bloggers from around the US post photos of all the plants that are blooming in their gardens. Here's what's blooming in my garden toda...

For those of us living in Massachusetts, the winter garden begins in November, when most trees drop their leaves, and persists until almost the end of April, when the majority of trees leaf out again. We view our winter landscape for five months out of each year.

Recently, I came across a list of Cary Award-winning plants. The Cary Award program is designed to promote the use of outstanding plants for New England gardens. It is administered by Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, MA and is named after Shrewsbury plantsman Ed Cary. One of the purposes of the program is to highlight relatively uncommon plants ...

Plant explorers of the 19th and 20th centuries introduced hundreds of eastern Asian plant species into western cultivation. Many of these plants have become so common in the American landscape, that it is difficult to imagine our gardens without them. Forsythia, weeping cherry trees, Japanese maples, Sargent crabapple and old-fashioned bleedi...

One of the benefits of belonging to a garden club is that you are often introduced to new plants. Gardeners are generous folks and enjoy sharing their plants, especially when they are redesigning a garden bed to make room for new acquisitions. Healthy gardens produce a bounty of perennials that need division ...

Garden Blogger's Bloom Day was started five years ago by the May Dreams Gardens blog. On the 15th of every month, garden bloggers from around the US post photos of all the plants that are blooming in their gardens. La...

On a clear, sunny day, it’s delightful to take a walk through the winter garden. All the evergreens that add quiet beauty to the garden throughout the year become the main focus in winter, when the perennials have vanished underground and the deciduous shrubs and trees have lost their lea...

When I first became interested in hellebores, Hellebore foetidus was not at the top of my acquisition list. After all, who would want to brush by a “stinking hellebore’ in their garden? Luckily, I couldn’t resist a beautiful healthy specimen at the local big box store one day, and the Stinking Hellebore has b...

Hellebore 'Snow Bunting' is one of my favorites - an early bloomer in my Zone 5 garden. Its buds begin poking out of the ground in early December, and depending on the severity of the winter, will open in February or March.

New varieties of hellebores continue to be introduced. Thanks to the busy German breeder Hueger, a new cultivar of Helleborus niger has been introduced which blooms as early as Thanksgiving. It is an outstanding bloomer, with a great display of 2-3” pristine white single rose flowers by mid December. This compact new cultivar, growing to  roughly 12” x 1...

At this time of year, when I am yearning for any sign of spring, I get the boost I need from the winter blooms of witch hazel. Their ribbon-like flowers in shades of yellows, oranges and reds fill the winter air with a clean, sweet scent that is most welcome to this winter-weary New Englander.

When I first began gardening, the only dogwood I knew of was our native dogwood tree, with it's spring-time show of delicate pink or white blossoms. Yet the dogwood genus contains a huge variety of plants, ranging from woodland ground covers, to shrubs, to trees that grow to forty feet. While many of these make excellent additions to the home landscape, none are more versatile than the redtwig dogwoods. These mu...