SAN LUIS VALLEY — The wind was blowing again today, making today’s high temperature of 37 feel like 20. But the winter sun was shining, so we bundled up and headed out to visit some local gardens. I love to stroll through a garden in winter. There’s a calmness about it. There’s no work to be done – no weeds to pull, no hoses to lug about, no pruning to consider. The garden is just resting, and it invites us to rest too. 

We’re so lucky here in the valley. Our winters aren’t gray! (You former midwesterners know what I’m talking about!) Instead, our landscape is set in the backdrop of the steel blue mountains and beautiful Colorado sunshine. These provide the perfect setting to enjoy the more nuanced beauty of the winter garden, with its interesting textures and the palette of muted colors that nature has paired so perfectly with light from the low southern sun. 

We have many plants available to us that provide visual interest in the winter garden.  

Several plants have colorful berries in winter. Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) is a Colorado native shrub with charming creamy white berries in fall and winter. There is a hedge of snowberry bushes on the Adam State University campus. The bushes have only a few remaining berries, and lots of scat next to them, a telltale sign the berries have been well appreciated. There are also several 4 x 6 foot shrubs near the campus that have a chaotic pattern of branches and multiple clusters of deep red berries (winterberry?). Wood’s rose (Rosa woodsii), our native species rose, is still dotted with deep red rose hips, and evergreen Rocky Mountain junipers are covered with smoky blue berries. 

One of the easiest ways gardeners keep textural beauty in the winter garden is by simply leaving the seed heads on annuals and perennials until spring. In one garden, yarrow (Achillea spp) had been planted next to rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa), and the coarse, faded gold yarrow seed heads beautifully complemented the softer, fluffy pale yellow seed heads of the rabbitbrush. Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida), purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), upright sedums like Autumn Joy (Hylotelephium spp), and sunflowers (Helianthus spp) also have seed heads that add interesting texture to the garden. These are nature’s birdfeeders, and the birds they bring to the winter garden are an added source of life and beauty. 

Ornamental grasses keep their structure and provide graceful movement in our winter winds. Blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis), our Colorado state grass, grows in bunches 1 to 2 feet high. It has large, light colored horizontal seed heads atop stems that provide gentle movement on windy days. A number of valley gardens have a beautiful wheat-colored feather reed grass (Calamagrostis spp) that reaches a height of about 4 feet and sways beautifully in the breeze. Several gardeners have paired the feather reed grass with burgundy Japanese barberry shrubs (Berberis thunbergii) and, even though the barberry leaves have faded some, the contrast with the blonde feathery grass is still lovely. 

Then there is the backbone of color, texture and structure in the winter garden - our evergreen spruce, firs, Douglas-firs, pines, and junipers. Our evergreen trees and shrubs come in every shape and size, from juniper groundcovers (Juniperus sabina variants) to majestic 55 foot tall Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens). Many evergreens are decorated with cones or berries all winter. My favorites are the pinyon pines that cover themselves in beautiful blossom-like cones. 

The winter garden is a special place. It has a quietness that invites us to slow down a bit, to pause, and to appreciate its restful beauty.  

What are the favorites in your winter garden? I’d love to see photos! Please send me an email at SLVgardening@gmail.com.