By habit northerners, including amateur and professional ‘horticulture’ oriented people refer to color in the autumn garden as any color but green. Red, pink, scarlet, orange, rust, chartreuse, gold, yellow, maroon, plum….you get the idea……green is never listed.
This is mainly the habit, monkey see, monkey do. But there is another reason why these days greens have become so much more important in the art of landscape gardening.
Over the past twenty five years the greatest numbers of ‘new’ plants in our Twin Cities ‘north’ for use in our art form, are coniferous evergreens. Some such as Microbiota from Russia and Chamaecyparis from Japan, are genera which finally are available in the Twin City market.
Others are old time conifer ‘inventions’ which finally had made the Twin City market as a natural response to the greater interest in the landscape garden and an ability to pay extra for the more unusual.
And then there are the newer ‘inventions’, new breedings and more commonly new discoveries from nature’s ‘mistakes’ all of which give us a much wider variety of colors AND sizes of green conifers…….
“Conifer” refers to woody plants which bear cones.
At present on this 9th of November, 2011 my landscape garden is still radiant with reds, pinks, browns, rusts, maroons, scarlets, oranges, yellows and chartreuse. But the base for this canvas is still green from the conifers…..from the darks of yews to the darks of the shade-sides of nearly any other upright green foliaged conifer, these are the plants which dominate, frame, and define the beautiful pictures of a classic landscape garden, not only today in late Autumn at its colorful best, but in Winter and early Spring when their forms truly dominate the classic landscape garden.
Here is a partial list of the more noticeable sources of color in my today’s landscape garden show in a year where there was no killing frost until evening six days ago and very little frost since:
Three Fothergilla with all colors of autumn, three Paperbark maple trees, one brilliant yellow-gold, another blinding orange, and a third scarlet red all in full display, two Norway maples pruned as eight foot shrubs, both orange, two Crimson Spire oaks viscious orange blending with rust and scarlet, and the third week of now pinkish orange of my eight by eight foot yellow leafed barberry.
I allow the Japanese spiraeas to seed whereever they want….and then I cull when they are out of place according to my eye. I think most of these autumn oranges are seedlings of Gumball spiraea or Anthony Waterer, or Neon. Some are from Little Princess and remain tight foliaged and orange in fall color. I have a number of Juddii viburnums throughout the grounds. Besides the wonderul fragrance of its midMay blooms, these viburnums display a mass of plum to maroon to red leaf color in late autumn.
The best maroons are the more massive purple leafed smokebush especially Velvet Cloak. Grace Smokebush is spectacularly colorful and has been for a month…..orange blending in every way to maroon. The steadiest of the darker maroons is Black Beauty Elderberry, which in my grounds dies back to the ground every year and then recovers, sending up eight to ten foot stems…..notice the plural of this statement, please. Every leaf is still on each of my half a dozen Black Beauties, and every leaf is the same dark purple-maroon as borne months ago in Spring.
The colorful conifers which provide the form and contrast of today’s setting start with the brilliant yellow of some Sungold (King’s Gold) Chamaecyparis, both trees and shrubs, yet although all essentially are the same Chamaecyparis pisifera aurea nidiformis plants, some have turned lime green instead.
The Andorra juniper has already turned into its winter’s plum color.
In stark contrast are those in the bluish greens…..Dwarf Colorado Blue Spruce, Pumila Scot’s Pine, Hughes, Maneyi, Table Top, and Blue Prince Juniper.
The upright Japanese Yew or its Taunton ‘spreader’ yew, especially if grown in summer shade, is still very, very dark green and getting darker as winter ‘falls’ on us. Another impressive very dark green comes from the foliage of the Clanbrassiliana Spruce a dwarf of about 15 feet height at ‘maturity’.
The Serbian spruce shows a bicolor combination of turquoise newer foliage above the older dark green.
The conifer genus which our Minnesota gardens cannot do without is ‘Thuja”, the arborvitaes.
Whether the tall pyramids, the spiky pyramids, the fat uprights, the round ones, the bluish green ones, dark green or chartreuse green, the golden, or the burnt tipped orangie shrubby ones, those with spiral foliage growth and others fuzzier appearing, this genus is a god-send to the Minnesota landscape gardener.
Most arborvitaes darken significantly as winter approaches. Many of those with genetic yellow in them will begin to display it by the ides of March.
I have a couple Sunkist or Yellow Ribbon planted in full sun for half day that remains as yellow today as it was in July.
Growing and maintaining the landscape garden is an art form surpassed by no other in stimulating the spirit of those who create it, maintain it and display it.
Give it a try, but be patient and alert. Give us a call at Masterpiece when you need assistance…..at 952-933-5777.