Excerpted from The Garden in Winter
By Rosemary Verey
Winter Colour: Green
Green is the backbone colour of winter. It is too fundamental and comes in too many different forms not to be at the forefront of your planning for winter colour. Green has a thousand shades, from the palest lime to the darkest yew. It will reflect, it will absorb, but above all it will be there, year in, year out, the dominant colour of winter.
Dark green conifers with massive, brooding outlines are the embodiment of winter’s greenness: they are the first evergreen trees to come to mind. You will have to decide which you want as focal point, which as height accents, and which as background or hedge. Remember that conifers have thick foliage right down to the ground–planted close together they quickly become a living screen. The taller they grow the more they will confine you, hedge you in.
The nurseryman Alan Bloom has rightly described the role of conifers as the ‘continuity links in a garden. It’s a vital function, for they change but little in colour from one season to another, and in the darkest depths of winter the upright forms stand out like sentinels.’ So which of the conifers shall be the first of the many greens a winter garden so desperately needs? To start with there are the hedges, the gardener’s ally in shaping the framework of a garden. Best of all is the common yew, Taxus baccata. Darkest of the dark greens, it is not as slow growing as many people imagine. Once established, it will grow at least 9 inches a year. As an alternative you can use Thuja plicata ‘Atrovirens’, which has a more lustrous green foliage, but is never as solid or reliable as yew. For tall evergreen windbreaks and backcloths, nothing is better than the western red cedar, Thuja plicata, its parent species.
If you want to use conifers as single trees for strategic positions in your garden, first you must decide which shade of green you require; then which shape is right; and finally whether you will need a form that can be clipped and kept within bounds. Some conifers have a dense conical habit, like Cupressus glabra ‘Pyramidalis’, others have a firm, upright form, such as Juniperus communis ‘Hibernica’. Then there are those which kept low, spread and can be used as groundcovers, often as good at suppressing weeds as they are at providing winter greenery. Spreading junipers are best for this; Juniperus procumbens and its more compact form, J.p. ‘Nana’, are both quite low on the ground. For a slightly taller effect, but still predominantly horizontal, J. sabina ‘Tamariscifolia’ is a beautiful plant. It is excellent when sited as a single specimen at the top of steps, on a bank or as an infilling shrub in a shady border. The low junipers can be very attractive in winter when frost makes their leaves sparkle or when covered in snow.
An interesting and proven use of conifers is to mass them together to make a purely evergreen garden. The more usual way of treating conifers is as occasional statements, adding strength to garden colours in winter. Their dark green is an effective counterpoint to the more ephemeral trees and shrubs with alluring winter bark and foliage, and sets off the lighter and brighter stems of deciduous shrubs. In front of dark green yew, I have golden-stemmed willow and Rubus cockburnianus, its dark, purplish stems covered with silvery bloom. The red and yellow stems of the dogwoods can be used in the same way. If you use conifers in your mixed borders, they can be an effective foil for the early bulbs, for grey santolinas, and for the spikes of variegated iris leaves or handsome yuccas. In texture they can contrast with large, shiny bergenia leaves, with round, velvety-purple tellima leaves, or with the feathery quality of grasses. The possibilities for combinations are endless.
Wall shrubs and climbers are halfway in height between tall trees and groundcovers. First of all there are the ivies. In summer, the impact of their leaves is minimal, whereas in winter I love the intense glow of common ivy, Hedera helix, on my Cotswold walls. In a French garden, years ago, I saw ivy, clipped to about 18 inches, growing up the trunks of an avenue of lime trees–leg-warmers in fact. I saw them in late autumn, with a carpet of cyclamen joining each tree. There are two flowering evergreen clematis, both of which like shelter and a sunny wall. Clematis armandii is a vigorous climber with dark, attractive, hard-textured leaves and white flowers at the end of winter. It requires plenty of space–you might use it to cover an unsightly roof or shed. Clematis cirrhosa balearica is more delicate, with ferm-shaped leaves. Two climbing roses are also evergreen–the vigorous Rosa banksiae, with its fresh yellow-green leaves, and R. laevigata, the Cherokee rose, which by contrast has glossy, bright green leaves with red petioles. When you are planning a colour scheme for you wall, bear in mind the variety of shades and textures, and position your chosen plants so that green winter leaves and summer flowers complement each other, I plant sweet peas up Itea ilicifolia and Clematis x jackmanii through Hedera colchica ‘Sulphur Heart’, and you might try growing eccremocarpus through Garrya elliptica.
Shrubs are the mainstay of a garden. In summer they anchor the planting, preventing the exuberant annual flowers, herbaceous plants and wall climbers from getting out of hand. In winter the evergreen shrubs may well be the only plants above ground in a particular part of the garden, so their siting, the density of their foliage and the intensity of their colour’ especially when the sun shines on them, will be all-important. Hollies give me the feeling of security. There are several green-leaved varieties to choose from. They stand out well against the darker evergreens, and the density of colour which the smallness of their leaves produces makes their presence strongly felt in the garden; clipping them makes them firm in shape as well as solid in colour. The small-leaved Japanese holly, Ilex crenata ‘Microphylla’, is one of the hardiest evergreens and makes a dense shrub or handsome small tree. It can be pruned to make an excellent hedge, topiary, pleach, or espalier. The remarkably hardy Ilex glabra ‘Densa’, or inkberry, is another surprise, with its lax habit of growth (holly is usually stiff) and small, flat, dark green leaves. Evergreen berberis are useful either as hedges or specimen shrubs. Berberis gagnepainii lanceifolia and B. darwinii are both excellent for either purpose. For ground cover the low-growing B. candidula, with small, dark green, glossy leaves is extremely useful. Pittosporum is another family I favor. Pittosporum tenuifolium has small, wavy-edged leaves with black stems. It is a good plant for picking, but take care not to spoil your bush. Evergreen shrubs are generally less hardy in their variegated forms, but the lovely P. ‘Garnettii’ I have found to be hardier than P. tenuifolium. P. tobira can look wonderful as a hedge in warmer climates.
Groundcovers and herbaceous plants, useful in the border and elsewhere in winter, can be used deliberately as a carpet through which spring bulbs push their way. Three of my standbys for evergreen groundcover are scarcely mentioned in any of the books on this subject, except by Beth Chatto, and she praises them all. My chosen plants are Pachyphragma macrophylla, Pachysandra terminalis, and Waldsteinia ternata. None of them is spectacular, but they all go on doing their own thing, covering the ground, keeping down the weeds, giving a show of flowers in due season and demanding no attention apart from a slight brush-up in spring. I would hate to be without the green vincas in winter. They will oblige in almost any shady corner assigned to them and by sending up flower spikes–blue, white, even plum-purple with double flowers. They will reward you, not only with constant greenery, but also with a patch which needs virtually no attention throughout the year. As with all good ground covers you must not allow them to get out of hand. A groundcover plant which is a feature all year round is Liriope muscari, with narrow, dark green leaves. Like Ophiopogon japonicus, it is much used under trees in warm states where lawns will not thrive because of heat and lack of rain.
Grasses may be used in different ways–as individual clumps in borders, merging in with herbaceous plants and shrubs; as specimen features in a lawn; or as a whole bedful of a single or several varieties. James van Sweden writes: ‘Grasses change dramatically through the year. They move in the wind, make lovely sounds, and have soft colors and beautiful hues in winter. In addition to all that they provide food and resting places for birds.’ As he rightly notes, many grasses are more golden or cream-coloured than they are green, but there is one smaller grass, Festuca glauca, with thread-like leaves only 6 inches long, which are an attractive blue-green. It is quite suitable for the rockery, where it looks better than in the border and will give a soft feeling to the stiffness of the rocks in winter.
No true gardener’s garden is complete without ferns. Whereas grasses appreciate sun, ferns require shade. Most of them will still be looking fresh in February; soon after that, I cut off the old fronds and await the uncurling of the new. But do not be too hasty in cutting down and tidying away. The deciduous ferns will linger on until set back by hard frost, but the evergreen ferns come into their own in winter. Their names are difficult to master, their beauty not to be ignored. The palish green Japanese shield fern, Dryopteris erythrosora, is about 24 inches; when you turn the fronds over you will find them decorated with bright scarlet spore capsules. Cyrtomium falcatum, the Japanese holly fern, has broad segments to its leaves which contrast well with more delicate foliage. It will make a bold patch on the edge of woodland, but it is rather tender. I would not be without the hart’s tongue fern, Phyllitis scolopendrium–it is so useful in winter vases and will spring up from cracks in walls and paving. The tawny brown spores run in parallel lines, matching the colour of the stems. On some other ferns, the spores are in regimented circles the size of match heads. Another favorite is Polystichum setiferum, the soft shield fern, which will tolerate drier soil than most. Turn over the frond and you will discover that the stems are swathed in almond-coloured papery scales.
If you were to pick a leaf or stem from all of the green plants I have mentioned in this section, you would be amazed at the kaleidoscope they offer. Like no other colour, nature’s greens are all complimentary: even if, with gay abandon, you used them all in your garden, you would still never wince at an unhappy clash.
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