A snow-covered garden can be magical. Sometimes, during a London winter, I’d wake up in the morning and find my garden transformed by a few inches of snow. Looking out from the living room, my familiar garden took on a distinctive character. It was as if I’d pushed a thicket of coats aside in my wardrobe and entered Narnia.
Something that brings the snow garden alive is seeing and hearing birds. They animate the outdoor space, and on a cold winter’s day, I could find robins and blackbirds about. Plants with berries in the winter (like holly and ivy) fed and supported them when food was scarce.
You’re never alone in a garden. In fresh snow, I spotted the tracks of animals who visited my garden at night, maybe the hedgehog or urban fox. I wondered, whose are these tracks and where do they go?
The benefits of snow
Snow is often referred to as the poor people’s fertilizer. It’s much more than frozen water falling from the sky! Its delicate crystalline structure contains tiny pockets that collect other molecules, carrying nutritious elements like nitrogen and sulfur from the air to the soil.
Snow also acts as a natural insulator, with its crystalline structure and trapped air pockets protecting delicate roots and bulbs against radical temperature fluctuations during hard freezes. Similarly, the insulating properties of snow protect the overall soil biome, keeping beneficial bacteria, overwintering insects and helpful earthworms safe from drastic temperature fluctuations.
A covering of snow will help minimize erosion from winter winds, keeping delicate topsoil in place for next spring’s planting. Finally, a winter with good, heavy snowfall means reservoirs are adequately refilled for the dry season.
Let the snow garden gladden you
During the short and often gloomy days of winter, how do you make the snow garden gladden your spirits?
Outstanding gardens with predictable snow make the most of all seasons. Their beauty derives from form, texture, shape and winter-flowering plants. A beautiful snow garden benefits from trees, large shrubs and perennials so that each can complement and enrich the view. Clipping trees or larger shrubs into topiary shapes also adds to the view.
If the gardener has prepared for winter by digging in spring bulbs, the show becomes even richer. These bulbs will poke their heads up through the snow, announcing their presence. Over time, bulbs like snowdrops, irises and daffodils will naturalize into large drifts of shimmering colour. That’s when the display against the whiteness becomes hypnotic.
In shadier areas or woodland, winter flowering camellias and buds of rhododendrons provide a burst of colour against a background of evergreen conifers. Rhododendron sinogrande, with its giant, strappy leaves, is native to the alpine areas of Tibet and China. As evergreens, these plants’ leaves alone are awe-inspiring in winter. In spring, they burst into large cream to pale yellow flowers with crimson centres.
Perennials with persistent foliage, such as heucheras, add to the texture and interest in the snow garden. For flowering plants, you can’t beat the multitude of flowering hellebores massed in an area. Hellebores bloom unexpectedly early in winter, and their foliage is evergreen. Their flowers emerge from a spike, and cutting back the leaves allows their colours to brighten the pale light of winter. Their flowers droop downwards, so I tend to plant hellebores in an inclined, shady area of the garden so I can properly admire them.
Shrubs with colourful branches, like dogwood in yellow or fiery red, can gleam against the snow. Perennials like hydrangea hold their spent blooms, and those spent blooms hold up to winter snow and freezes. Shrubs and trees that keep their foliage in winter, such as thuja, holly, wintergreen and boxwood, are visual treats.
Other shining lights in winter include witch hazel, winter-flowering honeysuckles, wintersweet, mahonia, daphne and winter jasmine.
Intention and effort
A beautiful snow garden takes intention and effort. Certain gardens I’ve visited have achieved the feeling of Narnia—the “Snow in the Crane and Turtle Garden” of Konchi-in, Kyoto, Japan is one of those. There, I found both serenity and mystery. The way the snow draped over the pines, along with the muffled sound of a temple bell, created poetry in a path.
«LECTURE CONNEXE» THE MAGIC OF A WINTER GARDEN: Anything worthwhile takes time and effort»
image : Scorpions and Centaurs
