“Winter Interest”

Winter Interest
I am a child of the north. I need my winters.  Born in November in New York City, I was whisked north at two weeks of age to our new home in Toronto where my parents had moved in September. I spent those first key months of December and January in English Canada where it was the custom, as Penelope Lively reminds us in her wonderful book, Life in the Garden, to put “the baby in her pram out in the garden in midwinter because that was what the baby books said you should do.” I know my mother followed the book. I like to think I began life, out in the garden, with snow on my face.  A child of the garden, a child of the north.

I still need snow on my face. And I need snow on the ground. I need snow to show me deer tracks, so I can learn the paths they take through my garden. If I know their paths, I can better protect my plants from their chewing. I need snow with its bright white to set off the bright red of the winterberry bushes that line a chunk of the back border and that sit between the blue spruces. I need snow to insulate and temporize my gardens’soil, because an even temperature protects the plants from the frost heaves that shove their crowns above ground, subjecting them to disease and rot. I need snow to provide a slow melt that waters the winter garden and keeps things wet.

I need my winters, and I need my garden. Where I live winter lasts four months. I can’t be without my garden for four months. It grounds me, even when I do not have my hands in the dirt. It keeps me honest, reminding me that I depend on plants for my life. It speaks to me of a world beyond the human that matters more to the planet’s well-being than I do.

Of course, there is pruning one can do even in winter. There are catalogues to peruse and lists to be made of plants to buy. There are new tools to research and current tools to sharpen.  And of course, books, books, so many books to be read and study.  The garden is never much out of mind.

But for my heart there is what gardeners like to call “winter interest.” I have created a garden with lots of winter interest. It’s mostly an inside affair, of the eye, not the hand, of something seen through a window, not grasped on the ground.  It’s done with bark and seed heads, with buds and stems, habit and color. It brings me joy, no matter the weather.

From my living room I can take in the fragile beauty of the dead flowers on my old-fashioned ‘Annabelle’ Hydrangea, planted up against the front of the house, dried brown puffs that respond to the slightest movement of air. Inside, I experience these puffs as fragile but in fact they are really tough.  Fierce winds remove no petal, heavy wet snow bends them down but only briefly. They come back up, framed by the window, intact, the only change an occasional rosier hue that evokes a memory of their late summer beauty.

Looking out the kitchen window I am greeted by a feast of color and motion. Along the back border the needles of the spruces turn a steely blue in winter. In between are the winterberry bushes with their profusion of fire-engine red berries. The berries mass against a blue sky and white ground, mesmerizing, until one day, in February, all of a sudden, all at once, robins arrive and strip the bushes bare. Did the berries finally become sweet enough?  Did the robins just discover them? At least by February I can let them go.

From the kitchen window I can also see the little bluestem grasses still standing in the perennial garden. All through December, until the first really heavy snow in January, the bluestem remain upright, their uncut dried foliage beautiful still, hints of blue on stems that vibrate reddish rose. In the sun they glow, giving me the color I crave in winter’s monochrome. In the wind they bob and wave, giving me the movement I crave in winter’s quiet. I do the noon dishes with pleasure, alert, watching.

Behind the garage is a star magnolia. I did not know when I planted the twig I thought was a shrub that it would grow into a tree whose buds in winter look like pussy willows, soft and fuzzy and grayish-white. These buds cover the tree and last for months, offering a touch of tenderness in winter that I can see every time I walk or drive into the garage. Its branches extend across the back window, reminding me how often plants exceed our expectations, how often they give us more than we could have imagined possible.

Looking out, I am also working.. In winter the garden reveals its fundamental structure and design, its “bones.”  If the garden works in winter, it will work in spring and summer and fall.  Now you can tell if your paths really work to help people move through your garden. You can tell if they start when they should and end where they should and wander enough in between. Now you can evaluate the proportion of lawn to beds – too much of one, too little of another?

That piece of sculpture you bought on impulse in August stands out quite clearly now. Do you like it or hate it?  And what about that birdbath and bench combination you were so thrilled about getting on sale in the fall?  Do you fantasize a summer day with you on the bench watching birds in their bath or do you suddenly see something you just have to keep clean?  In the winter conifers emerge from the background. Are you inundated with needles or could you use a few more pines?  And then there is that new tree you planted last spring. Is it properly placed?  How does it relate to its neighbors? How does it look from inside?

A few summers ago I planted a Heptacodium right in the center of the garden I see from my kitchen window. This plant hovers between a small tree and a large shrub. As it has grown, it has begun to annoy me because, with leaves, it blocks my view of the distant crabapple, and of the bit closer orange, yellow and red garden. In the winter, though, it delights me. Reddish brown bark peels, flakes, curls in all directions; some pieces actually stream off to the side like pennants and toss about, telling me which way the wind is blowing. Its branches cut the air at interesting angles, making it a weird and wild winter dancer. Besides, with the branches bare of leaves, I can once again see my distant crabapple.

While I cook and clean up, I ponder: Should I remove a chunk of the Heptacodium next spring so that I can see my crabapple in the summer?  Or should I leave it large for the joy it gives me in winter?  Which season do I prioritize? Which set of “bones” do I want?

Sometimes I am sorry to see spring come.  Eight months before I see my winter garden again. I wonder if Persephone felt a similar ambivalence.

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