I visit my landscape garden almost every day of the year. After all, I do live in paradise on Earth. Even if not perfectly planned, the pleasures topped by inspiration and gratitude however selfish they may seem, are almost incomparable in life’s experience even competing with the joys of the family, and offering easier solutions when things go wrong.
I have made a list of plants during these winter walks while examining my various gardened rooms, which dramatically add color and/or other interest to the beauty and spirit of these spaces.
Almost any spectacular winter garden in Minnesota begins with a clever setting of evergreen conifers for privacy, background and borders…..as well as dramatic specimens.
If ‘shockingly’ beautiful means anything to you, dear reader, in these, my own grounds, the SHOCKINGLY part occurs only in winter. I do prefer the feel and spirit of Spring, its colors, smells, perfections. I agree our Autumn can be very attractive, but nothing SHOCKS the human eye and soul as the beauty of that right kind of snowfall, over the negative spaces which divide the shapes, colors and sizes of the sturdy woody perennials…and certain herbaceous ones as well, which hold frostings of snow as if the plants themselves intended to show off beauty and pride.
Viewing “Purity” over Earth’s landscapes can occur only in Winter.
This past winter has been one of the best for such shows. In my area there have been no heavy rain and ice snowfalls to crush or bury plants.
If late autumn snowfalls are wet and heavy, usually all otherwise sturdy herbaceous perennials are crushed to the ground under the weight of the ice and weight of wet snow. (Remember Saturday, November 13, 2010?) Rain turned to rain with ice around 1:00 AM, and then to rain, ice and snow and thirty inches of it on my landscape garden eventually wiping out electricity and indoor heat besides felling countless huge branchings of pines for the next 20 hours.
Such winters are shocking indeed…..but they aren’t the best of beauties. Drier snowfalls of two to five inches a swipe are usually the best…..expecially without wind. And occasionally you will see the best of any visual paradise on Earth, yes, here in the North in a landscape garden at a midnight made bright and clear by the light of a full moon, yet overhead hang dark clouds sprinkling huge but soft flakes of floating snow as if sugar decorating a delicious dessert.
The profound quietude of such a snow’s hushness completes the unbelievable perfection of the moment.