“A garden in winter is the absolute test of a true gardener. Fair weather gardeners are to gardens what interior designers are to buildings – they know only half the story. True gardening is as much about the bones of a garden as its planting: true architecture is as much about the form and structure of a building as its rooms. If your garden looks good in winter, you belong to a select band of bending nature to its will.”   

— esteemed garden designer Rosemary Verey

Decades of working with garden clients have demonstrated that the majority love the spring and summer seasons and build their gardens around those seasons. Real gardeners love those seasons too but love the winter landscape and plan for the arrival of that season. In natural landscapes unmanaged by humans, the forms, textures, even scents of plants come alive. Land topography, water (rivers, streams, ponds), stone walls, allées, hedges, vistas beyond and internal showcase winter’s beauty. One could argue that winter lays bare the structure of your home landscape, and all too often spotlights our design flaws.

Perhaps I am in the minority: I love winter. In the northeast the colder weather creates an atmosphere of rest, reflection, examination, dormancy, yet exploration, and the possibilities of what could be. For those reasons, and others, I appreciate winter.

So, use your wintertime for observing landscape spaces of all sorts. Look and dig deeper into what makes a landscape successful, what collections of plants work well together for the purposes you desire. Our individual yards and gardens are connected beyond property lines to our neighbors, and the shared ecosystem. Winter is the perfect time to work toward fostering the human spirit with beauty and land care in mind.

Here are some of the ways I’m working this winter to plan ahead in my work with Farm Fresh Rhode Island and the North Shore Land Alliance