Carla Z Mudry is sharing her garden with us today.
I know it sounds crazy, but you actually can garden in January!
I have this giant Japanese maple we inherited with the property in the front. I love Japanese maples, perhaps a little too much, and I go out of my way to take care of this one. She gets regular pruning and more. When this Japanese maple is fully leafed out, she casts shade and dappled light over the entire area where she is located. And that leads to grass being harder to grow. It is also an area of the garden that can get quite dry, so I have been looking at it with fresh eyes. I decided the tree would be better off with wood chips and mulch. So last week that was a garden project!
I am not going to underplant the tree with more shrubs. What I am going to do is place more bulbs. I have this idea in my head of how I want this space to look, and I am going to start with species daffodils. I think they will look terrific, and they will spread. They’re not giant traditional daffodils that you think of as cut flowers, even if they’re a little more wild.
When you walk around your garden in the winter, it has its own life. It’s more angular. It’s more structural, but there is still this winter garden. And the ultimate beauty of the winter garden is that it can show you where you might want to go in the spring. I use the winter garden for thinking about things I want to rework or transplant or trim.
Winter in the garden is also the imagining season. Some people can’t do that. I can. And I envision what an area could look like. And then I plan. Remember that a garden isn’t static; it evolves.
Bare branches are their own kind of beauty, living sculptures in the winter landscape.
A chainsaw sculpture made from the stump of a dead tree now graces the garden.
Seed heads provide food for wildlife and beauty for gardeners during winter.
The structure of the garden is more visible in winter with most of the leaves gone.
The winter sun at a low angle glows on bare garden branches.
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