Creating A Colourful Winter Garden To Brighten Up The Season
Winter can be a drab season with constant cold weather and grey skies. While many of us add colour and warmth to our homes this season, we tend to forget about our gardens and leave them looking worse for wear during the colder months.
However, it is possible to create a colourful winter garden and make your landscape part of the festive celebrations with clever garden design tricks. With a unique selection of plants, lighting and decor you can create a vibrant landscape to boost your mood and bring some colour to the dreary days of winter.
Lighting And Ambience
One of the best ways to create a colourful winter garden is through outdoor lighting. A staple of the season, decorative lighting can brighten even the greyest day and create a warm, inviting ambience both indoors and outdoors.
The shorter days of winter also make lighting the ideal tool to add colour to your garden, as the lights will be used frequently during the season. There are various ways you can create a warm ambience and use lighting to create a colourful winter garden, including:
- Lanterns: Lanterns with a warm glow or even fake flames can be used along paths or hung in trees as a charming touch to the landscape while also serving a valuable purpose. As well as creating a colourful winter garden, lanterns in key areas can also make your garden accessible in the dark evenings.
- Fairy Lights: These are a classic of the festive season, adding colour, warmth and illumination to our homes and gardens. Much like decorating your Christmas tree with fairy lights, incorporate these outdoors to make a colourful winter garden. Whether you opt for multicoloured lights or standard yellow glow, fairy lights can be draped across fences, twisted into shrubs and around trees, or even across garden furniture to add some magic to the landscape.
- Spotlights: Highlight key features of your garden design, such as statues or particularly striking plants, with spotlights to create visual interest after dusk. This additional light allows you to see the existing colour and interest in your garden even in the dark evenings
Winter-Flowering Plants
Although many plants enter their dormant phase during the winter, some bloom during the colder months to create a beautifully colourful winter garden.
These plants can be incorporated into any garden design ahead of winter or in the middle of the season to add a pop of colour to the landscape:
- Cyclamen: Cyclamen, with their pink, red or white delicate petals add a touch of elegance and beautiful colour to your garden throughout the winter months.
- Hellebores (Christmas Rose): These hardy flowers bloom from late winter to early spring, offering lasting colour and warmth. A staple of the festive season, these plants come in varying shades of white, pink and purple to suit all garden designs.
- Winter Pansies: Winter pansies are incredibly resilient flowers that bloom during the colder months. Available in many colours, these compact flowers are a great way to create a colourful winter garden and can be added to borders or containers.
Colourful Winter Shrubs
Colourful winter shrubs are one of the most overlooked plants, especially when it comes to creating a colourful winter garden because people do not realise they can thrive in cold weather.
These colourful shrubs thrive in the winter and offer vibrant hues that can brighten even the dullest of days:
- Viburnum: With clusters of pink or white flowers that bloom during the winter, these shrubs are not only beautiful but also produce a delightful fragrance that carries across the landscape even in chilly weather.
- Cornus (Dogwood): With its striking red stems, Winter Stem Colour Dogwood can add a dramatic touch to your winter landscape, even when other plants have faded away.
Evergreen Shrubs
Evergreens are the backbone of any winter garden as they thrive all year long, offering structure and greenery in every season. Some great options for evergreen plants to add colour this winter include:
- Holly: A classic of the winter season, Holly has dense greenery and bright red berries, bringing festive colours to even the most basic landscape.
- Boxwood: These shrubs offer lush green foliage all year round and can be shaped to suit your garden design.
- Pine and Spruce: Both of these evergreen trees are a staple of winter and can last hundreds of years once established. These evergreen plants will continue to add greenery, structure and beautiful scents to your landscape for years to come.
Berries and Seed Heads
Berries are another staple of the winter season and a great way to create a naturally colourful winter garden. Planting species that produce berries during the winter not only adds bright colours to your garden this season but also attracts wildlife for an additional layer of visual interest this winter:
- Echinacea and Sedum: With the natural, rustic appearance of their seed heads, these plants are not just attractive but also a great food source for birds.
- Pyracantha and Cotoneaster: These produce berries from bright red to orange, making them an ideal choice for all kinds of landscapes.
Conclusion
Winter can be a drab season, but your garden doesn’t have to be. Incorporating a range of winter-blooming plants and decorative features can create a colourful winter garden that will brighten even the gloomiest days this season.
At Taming Mother Nature, we believe that your garden deserves to look great no matter the season and we offer a range of services to ensure this. With a comprehensive garden design service, along with professional garden maintenance and landscaping, we can help bring out the best in your landscape at all times of the year.
