2024-01-13 11:55:00
Is your garden a dull, bare mess now? This can be done differently with these winter garden tips from Loethe Olthuis. Beat Blue Monday, put on garden gloves and go outside.
1. A MINI WINTER GARDEN
There are also colorful garden plants in winter. But maybe you don’t have much space for new plants, it’s too cold to put them up or you just don’t feel like it. Then start with a cheerful mini winter garden on a balcony or terrace table, or in a place in the garden that is clearly visible from your room. If you hang up some peanut garlands or make a feeding table, birds will automatically come to you. They also won’t immediately raid your berry bushes if there is plenty of other food! By the way, it’s not a good idea to leave your Christmas decorations outside. You’ll scare away more birds with one sparkly thing than you’ll attract with ten peanut streamers.
Let your creativity run wild. Arrange various berry-bearing or winter-flowering plants, bulbs and (small) shrubs in pots. Below you will find plenty of examples. Place whimsical branches, pine cones or tree stumps between them. Beautiful combinations include heather, Christmas rose and pearl berry or heavenly bamboo with mountain tea, crocuses and mini holly. A combination of different colors, leaf shapes and structures is the most beautiful. Don’t be frugal and put three or six pieces together each time. Only if it freezes very hard or for a long time should you protect them with bubble wrap or a garbage bag with a layer of hay in it. In the spring, after frost, plant them out in the garden or spread them out on your balcony. You can stack the branches and solid ones as hiding places for insects and small animals such as shrews.
2. BERRIES
Brightly colored berries stand out in a beautiful winter garden. There is also a wide choice of small berry-bearing shrubs, which can easily be grown in a pot on your balcony or in a small garden. Like the pearlberry, Pernettya, a cute shrub with white, bright pink or pink-red pearls. For the best effect, place several together in a pot. Or mountain tea (Gaultheria reclining), low-growing and also evergreen, with red berries in winter and white flowers in spring. Beautiful for a pot, but mountain tea can also be grown as a ground cover shrub in the open ground. The Gaultheria ‘Very Berry’ gets even more berries than the regular version! Another mini treasure is the native cowberry, Blueberry vine-idea. Small, evergreen with cheerfully shiny leaves and small red berries from autumn. There is also a variant with even more berries: Miss Cherry’s blueberry vine.
You may think it is too much of a public garden plant, but the slightly larger and strong skimmia has red or white berries that last all winter. Skimmia japonica ‘Godrie’s Dwarf’ with pink-red berries remains small. Also the dwarf medlar Cotoneaster dammerifamily of the larger, native wild dwarf medlar Cotoneaster is the most completeis made for a small winter garden.
I like to look at the fantastic lilac-purple berries of the beauty fruit, Calicarpa bodinieri. But they have one disadvantage, which is also an advantage: birds don’t like them, so they stick around for a long time. As an alternative I have a native Gelderland rose, Viburnum’s wealth, purchased, with large bunches of bright red berries and red, pink and purple leaves. My variant compact remains nice and small.
In slightly larger gardens, the orange, native rowan, the flaming firethorn (also beautiful against a fence) or the also native, evergreen holly (also beautiful against a fence) provideIlex) for color. Nowadays there are also ‘dwarf hollies’. Only the female holly bushes produce berries, so always make sure there is a male bush nearby. Or plant the self-pollinating one Ilex aquifolium ‘Alaska’it also gets berries on its own.
3. FLOWERS
Yes, there are flowers in winter too. Although they are usually not native, they often bloom into spring, so that early bumblebees and bees still enjoy them. Winter heather is fantastic on a balcony. The shrub remains green all year round and blooms from December to May with a cloud of purple flowers. Winter heather usually does better in pots than in the open ground, because heather likes acidic soil: buy hydrangea or rhododendron potting soil.
From the native Christmas rose (Helleborus foetidus) there are also many variants. They all bloom from December to April and early bees then vie for the pollen. Do you want a winter flowering climber? Jasminum nudiflorum, winter jasmine, can be pruned into a climbing plant or a shrub. In a sunny spot it blooms from December with bright yellow flowers on the bare wood, just like the fragrant yellow witch hazel (Soft witch hazel).
The mahogany bush (Mahonia) is breathtakingly beautiful, with evergreen spiky leaves and masses of spectacular light yellow, fragrant flowers from December. But he certainly doesn’t stay small! Camellia, a shiny, evergreen shrub with large pink or red ‘roses’, sometimes from February onwards, is a bit more modest. A real asset to your garden, but camellia is quite difficult about its location. Not in the wind, not in the sun, preferably partial shade, but also no morning sun.
Finally, you can now also plant early (organic) flower bulbs in pots, such as crocuses, snowdrops, small daffodils or winter aconites. They quickly start to bloom indoors, then they can go outside. Be sure to bring them back inside during severe frost!
You can also buy ‘winter violets’ at the garden centre. The smaller varieties in particular are beautiful and quite hardy, but they are not really sustainable, nor are the already flowering bulbs. Growing plants requires a lot of energy, fertilizer and often poison. Then it is better to invest in permanent March violets that bloom in early March and also smell wonderful.
4. LEAVES AND BRANCHES
Color comes not only from flowers or berries, but also from leaves and even branches. Such is Japanese rock heath, Pieris, highly recommended against winter blues. Especially the young leaves Pieris ‘Forest flame’, ‘Flaming silver’ of Pieris ‘Japonica variegata’ are beautiful red. In the spring they bloom with white flower clusters that insects love. Also American grape heather, Leucothoe, has beautiful leaves that change color in autumn and winter. The colder it is, the redder the leaf. Nandina domestica, Heavenly Bamboo or Sham Bamboo, is an exotic, medium-sized shrub with leaves that change from red to green and red berries in autumn. It blooms in summer with white flower panicles that attract bees. But you will also find plenty of color closer to home. The native red beech, also great as a hedge, turns orange-red in autumn. The leaves remain on the branches until spring.
Some shrubs lose their leaves but continue to shine, such as the native wild gale (Myrica gale) that keeps red flower buds in winter. The branches of the dogwoods White horn and the indigenous Bloody horns colors bright red in winter, beautiful against evergreen ivy.
Beautiful green is also quite cheerful. The olive willow Elaeagnus ebbingei has silvery gray leaves. The Japanese bread tree, Aucuba japonica, has beautifully spotted leaves and the ‘females’ have red berries in winter. Finally, an evergreen laurel tree does well in a pot: the leaves can be added straight to soup.
On your balcony or in the border there are plenty of perennials that provide color and structure, for example through their flower or seed umbels, irregular shape or discolouring leaves. Think of all kinds of grasses, celestial key, teasel, spurge species (Euphorbia), cobbler plant (Bergenia cordifolia) or the purplebell (Heuchera). Euphorbia characia Wulfenii looks like a plant from prehistoric times and blooms from February, the cobbler plant in March. The leaves of the purple bellflower can range from silver-green via rust-red to dark purple.
5. SMELL
What I miss in my garden in winter: scent! Fortunately, there are many winter-flowering shrubs that have a wonderful scent and also do well in a pot or a small garden. They often attract crowds of early bees in the spring. White-flowering and fragrant, for example, winter honeysuckle (The most fragrant honeysuckle). He will later receive beautiful red berries, a popular bird snack. The white flowering one Forsythia abeliophyllum smells from February. ‘Sweet boxwood’ sounds promising and it is. This evergreen Sarcococca confusion blooms and smells in February-March with creamy white flowers. But I am really in love with the soft yellow flowers of the melon tree or winter sweet (Chimonanthus praecox), which bloom all winter long and smell just like the name sounds. Buy a mature melon tree, otherwise it may take a long time before it blooms.
Prefer pink? The evergreen pepper tree Daphne mezereum ‘Rubra’ produces purple-pink, deliciously scented flowers from the end of February. The snowball, Viburnum of Bodnantense is also too often dismissed as a ‘public garden plant’. Too bad, because it is an extremely strong winter bloomer that has bunches of wonderfully scented, soft pink flowers from the end of November. Finally, put some rosemary, lavender or sage near your back door. Just rub the leaf and you will smell the summer!
6. BIRDS
Birds brighten up any garden. Chickadees in particular are born entertainers and will do anything for a tasty snack. Moreover, you can see them better in winter because the branches are bare! According to the Bird Protection Society, you can feed garden birds all year round, but it is extra important in winter because they quickly lose their fat reserves due to the cold. Above all, be consistent. Only if you provide tasty snacks every day will the birds keep coming, otherwise they will look elsewhere. Make no mistake: your regular garden birds recognize you. With such birds you actually have ‘pets’ in your garden.
How do you attract birds? Place or hang feeding tables, fat balls, baskets, peanut streamers and the like close to the house so that you can see the birds, but high enough to avoid any cats. Always put bowls of clean water down. When it freezes, cover them with chicken wire, for example, so that a beak can pass through, but the birds cannot bathe in it. Then they quickly become hypothermic.
Adjust the food and feeding area to the different bird species: magpies, crows and jackdaws, redwings, thrushes, blackbirds and starlings, make yourself happy with great currants and raisins, fruit (peel) and all types of berries. Tits, but also woodpeckers and nuthatches like fat balls, unroasted and unsalted peanuts and (bird) peanut butter, half coconuts, birdseed and sunflower seeds. Sprinkle it on a feeding table or hang it in and on trees or shrubs. You can give sparrows, siskins, finches, greenfinches, wood pigeons and turtle doves bread crumbs, weed seeds, mixed seed and sunflower seeds, both on the ground and on the feeding table. Wrens, hedge sparrows and robins are more choosy. Feed them ‘universal bird food’, or special insect mix, berries, live or dried mealworms, bread crumbs and uncooked oatmeal, in a sheltered spot on the ground or under bushes.
Finally, take a seat by the window and enjoy the view!
Gardening
Loethe Olthuis is a journalist. She gives weekly tips in Tijdgeest for gardening without blisters or poison spray.
Also read:
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