Many garden owners feel that the winter period is way too long.Four months or longer without beautiful sensations and the opportunity to see the wonderful world of flora is a painful break for them.Fortunately, some plant treasures can provide many pleasant experiences even on the hardest days of winter.
Trees and shrubs with picturesque silhouettes are extremely valuable.Even without leaves, they delight the eyes with their beautiful shapes and enrich the structure of the entire garden throughout the year.It is difficult not to notice the expansive, wonderfully branched silhouette of a palm maple, magnolia x soulangeana, or Elaeagnus angustifolia narrow-leaved olive .
Only the Japanese large-flowered dogwood kousa Cornus kousa and the pagoda dogwood Cornus controversa, whose long horizontal branches are arranged in distinct levels, may be more attractive. The umbrella-like shoots of Maacka Lonicera maackii drywood are also very elegant.
Trees and shrubs blooming in winter are a real garden rarity.Although they cannot match the splendor of perennials that bloom in spring and summer, they are very visible and almost unrivaled in the low-color season.
The charm of Hamamelis gives a charming spectacle. Between December and April, its tiny yellow or orange petals can even withstand temperatures below -10 ° C. In severe frost, they curl up and straighten after warming. In milder winters, the Chinese winterworm Chimonanthus blooms yellow from December, and the cherry 'Autumnalis Rosea' and viburnum 'Dawn' even from November.
Feeder or saucer on the windowsill? This is how birds should be fed in winter!
The winter garden is also decorated with ornamental fruit. How long they remain visible depends not so much on the weather as on the birds' appetite. If there is a lot of food in the immediate area, sea buckthorn, holly, beauty, as well as rose, skim and snowball will keep the fruit for many weeks.The quite large fruit of ornamental apple trees covered with snow caps look strange.
Among the attractions of the winter garden there are also trees and shrubs with colorful or patterned bark. Shoots of some species of dogwood and willow, as well as ornamental cherry 'Amber Beauty' and alder 'Aurea' are particularly intensely colored.Colorful, although leafless plants directly encourage long walks along garden paths and shorten the waiting time for the arrival of the new season.
