better outdoor living at home spring


Color in the Winter Landscape

Add certain plants to your outdoors that have special characteristic, such as colorful branches, fruit, shape, or interesting bark to enhance and add natural beauty to any winter landscape.

You may be looking for a way to spice up your yard’s winter landscape. The lack of color, muted hues, and sometimes the biting cold temperatures may give you a case of the blahs. The only joyful signs of life in your garden may be a few birds, a family of bushy-tailed squirrels, and a welcomed deer.

Many plants offer winter interest through their colored branches, papery peeling bark, or colorful berries. One such plant is the Winterberry (Ilex verticillata). The Winterberry is part of the holly genus. It also goes by the common names of Michigan Holly, Black Alder, and Coralberry. The female plant produce berries as long as there is a male plant in the vicinity for pollination. The nursery industry recommends matching up certain male pollinators (for example, ‘Jim Dandy’ or ‘Southern Gentleman’) with specific female plants.

The many varieties of this plant produce an abundance of colorful berries from red-orange (‘Afterglow’, ‘Aurantiaca’), bright red (‘Winter Red’, Sparkleberry’), to dark red (‘Spriber’ aka Berry Nice), and even a gold berry (‘Winter Gold’). The berries persist into the winter and will provide a winter snack for the birds.

The Winterberry is not a typical evergreen holly. It is a deciduous holly. But with just the berries on the slender branches, it is striking and picturesque in the landscape. The shrub and its berries can be highlighted in several ways, such as contrasting it against a nearby evergreen or the stonework of a chimney, or placing it along a light colored fence.

If you order plants from a catalog or online, be sure to research your plant selection beforehand to make sure it will thrive and survive in your locale.

Plants with colorful and/or textural character, such as the Winterberry, the Paperbark Maple, the River Birch, and the Red Twig Dogwood, may be just what your yard needs to bring it back to life during the winter.

 

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