It is often said that ‘good bones’ are the making of a garden, and in the depths of winter the framework of a garden is more important than ever. The structural elements of a design, including hard landscaping, cleverly placed trees, hedges or clipped topiary, knit everything together and give the eye a focus in the winter months. A heavy frost or a light sprinkling of snow can highlight the sweeps, lines and curves of these static elements, lifting the winter garden into a magical realm to quicken the heart and cheer the eye.
Thoughtfully placed trees add a crucial layer of green architecture to a garden. Bridging the divide between hard landscaping and planting, their role in winter is key – for their solid evergreen forms or delicate skeletal structures, but also for their ability to filter light and cast shadow. They can be planted in avenues, circles or naturalistic groups, used to create geometric patterns, or employed as single-specimen focal points to draw the eye. Multi-stemmed trees can be particularly sculptural and beautiful in winter, as well as those with interesting bark such as Acer griseum or Betula albosinensis.
Hedges, too, are crucial for winter structure, whether evergreen or deciduous, dividing a garden up, framing vistas, adding intimacy and enclosure, or bringing unity to a space. Their horizontal planes can contrast with and be broken up by upright forms such as tall, columnar yews.
Some of the most successful winter gardens contrast evergreen and deciduous hedging and trees: a long avenue of cherry trees, for example, with layered hedges of yew and beech, or pleached hornbeams with a yew or box hedge beneath. Despite being deciduous, beeches and hornbeams hold onto their leaves tenaciously into winter, and even when the leaves drop, their tangled networks of stems are beautiful, especially when backlit by a low winter sun.
Smaller-formed shrubs are just as important for structure, especially in a herbaceous border where other plants forms die back over winter. Those with a neat, domed habit that doesn’t have to be clipped are especially suited to planting within a border. Soft, emerald-green cushions of Hebe rakaiensis or striking mounds of Euphorbia x pasteurii provide evergreen colour and support for other plants in summer, before revealing their own shapes in winter.
Architecturally shaped shrubs such as Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’ or Viburnum plicatum ‘Mariesii’ need more space and are best planted as single specimens in a situation where they can show off rather than shrink into the background. Adding a different evergreen shade in winter can also be very effective – for example the silver-grey Teucrium fruticans, a Mediterranean shrub that can be clipped into pleasing domes.
Topiary is a gift to the winter garden, and one of the easiest ways to enliven a space. It can be tailored to any sort of garden from cottage garden to large estate, and the ways in which each plant can be shaped is limited only by your imagination. Stand-alone shapes such as pyramids, standards, parasols, chess pieces, animals or birds can be mixed and matched in any playful way you choose. Traditional spheres or cones can be updated with modernist blocks or cubes, and hedges can be manhandled into cloisters, crenellations or waves. More abstract topiary forms have emerged as a popular motif in the past decade or two, influenced by the Japanese art of pruning known as niwaki. Cloud-pruned shapes are particularly popular, as well as loose, lumpy forms that are dictated by the shape and nature of the plant itself.
In terms of evergreen plants to use for topiary, there are dozens to try as alternatives to the popular box and yew. Bay (Laurus nobilis), common privet (Ligustrum vulgare) and Japanese spindle (Euonymus japonicus) can all be clipped into any shape you choose. Phillyrea angustifolia is another popular topiary plant, while hollies, elaeagnus and conifers such as Thuja occidentalis and Cupressus macrocarpa can also be used. Garden designer Arne Maynard has popularized deciduous topiary, using clipped hornbeam and beech to form striking domes and chess-piece forms that draw the eye and give weight and pace to the winter landscape.
This living architecture is the most organic, natural way to bring structure into your garden, and it makes sense when designing a space to plan these elements first, before overlaying the layers of seasonal plants that will grow up and around these anchor points. In my own garden, many of these structural elements gradually become hidden as the herbaceous plants come back to life in spring and summer, only to be revealed again like old friends as the perennials die back again in autumn. Winter is a season to be embraced rather than ignored, and it really isn’t tricky to add the building blocks that will give your garden the architectural uplift it needs at this time of year.
This story originally appeared on House & Garden UK.
