18 Dec Planting for the winter
With the days getting shorter and colder, we might think that planting time is over. There are many lovely plants you can put in your beds to give you color and form through the winter. In the tree planter above, I’ve created a kind of woodland setting. I have a juniper appropriately called ‘Bluestar’, some heather, hellebore, which will give flowers in either the late fall or very, very early spring and wintergreen.
Plantings by Bluestar Gardens
Wintergreen, (Gaultheria) provides a bright red pop of color with its berries. They are a lovely contrast in the snow and mix in well with other evergreens. I like how the juniper’s blue tone plays well with the warmer tones of the hellebore and wintergreen.
Wintergreen is a native plant that can be found on forest floors. If you crush the leaves or berries of wintergreen, you will smell the oil of wintergreen that was used to flavor toothpaste and gum until fairly recently. When I hike with my daughter we will often pick a few wintergreen berries and munch on them like bunnies.