Snowy Winter Gardens

A predominantly pictorial blog of plants and flowers in snowy winter gardens this week. There are links to our other winter garden blogs with gardening tips and garden tasks for January. Plus links to blogs full of garden design ideas and planting schemes for gardens that look attractive and provide you with scented flowers throughout the winter months.

Your garden in the snow is a totally different garden from the one you see most of the year

“The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another quite different and if that is not enchantment then where is it to be found?”
J B Priestly

Yes, I admit it, I do find that first fall of snow a magical event. I love waking to the quietness, the stillness of a snow covered winter morning.

Ii is lovely to see the sun shining on frost covered flowers, turning the garden into a spectacle of sparkling diamond jewels. I wander through, the fresh snow crunching satisfactorily under my feet.

Standing, laughing at the dogs bounding through the snow. They try to leap higher than snow drifts and get drenched with the snow falling from the branches as they cavort through snow laden shrubs.

Of course, I shouldn’t let them play on a snow covered lawn, any more than they should be allowed on a frosty lawn, as the grass can be damaged and there will be bare patches in the green sward come the summer. But I do let the dogs play, and will have to sow with grass seed in April; not all garden designers have perfect gardens.

There will be work to be done in the garden still.

Whilst many plants lie cosy beneath a white blanket, ready to leap into life when the snowy winter garden turns to spring, there are others which need my care.

Conifer branches may break under the weight of a heavy snowfall; many shrubs have quite delicate stems and need the snow brushed away, other shrubs, such as this Lavender may have one or two broken stems but are generally fine.

A tree fern, Dicksonia Antarctica, will survive the winter in a sheltered city garden, but will appreciate the snow brushed off its fronds.

But pruning of trees and shrubs is not a gardening task for a frosty, snowy day, as it would risk damaging the plant.

Nature has undoubtedly mastered the art of winter gardening; Plews is taking notes by visiting clients’ gardens, gardens open to the public and walking in the countryside. All these provide a list of possibilities to create snowy winter gardens for new and existing clients; gardens full of winter scented flowers and evergreen richness.

Winter garden design and planting design inspiration for snowy winter gardens can be found in the links below, or contact us to start a conversation as to how we can help give you a garden that looks good all year round.