Trisha's Meanderings: The Winter Garden
Years ago I was invited to judge a country town garden competition, driving around my local town of Cooma to find what I thought was the best garden.
Having spent nine of my school years somewhere without competition of any kind, I find it hard to declare something or someone better than another. Instead I chose what I thought was the garden best suited to a really cold climate: one that would look as good in winter as it did in summer. A hard call, when winters at the foothills of the Snowy Mountains mean frosts down to minus 17, snow, sleet, howling winds and often drought. Hardy is the only word for it.
WINTER GARDENING W/ LE SAC
And the winner was… an elderly man whose whole garden was hedges.
A garden that looked every bit as good under inches of snow, on a frosty morning, or on a blisteringly hot summer's day. I can picture it so clearly, symmetrical hedges running down the hill from a dear old cottage with a front verandah, and nothing in the way of floriferousness. Unintentionally quite Italianate in design, but in the most gently understated way.
It made me look more closely at my own garden. Friends would more often come to stay in winter for the skiing, and so I planted hedges. Unclipped lilac walks, clipped snowberry hedges, a floriferous species rose hedge under the kitchen window, box hedges, Lonicera nitida for the same look in a fraction of the time, a winter-flowering yellow jasmine hedge separating the wild garden from the main garden, and sweetly fragrant winter jasmine under the windows.
So inspired by making the garden a place of beauty through those long winter months, I found myself looking for every reason to venture outside on frosty mornings. From that came winter garden seminars, winter open garden days and a gradual realisation that winter in the garden need not be something to endure. It could be something to celebrate.
Nothing compares to the wonder of waking up to a snow-strewn garden.
English garden books were full of advice about putting the garden to bed for winter, covering it all up, shutting everything down. But how dull, to live with that for six months or more, when the alternative was to embrace winter entirely. To notcut everything back. To enjoy the beautiful umbels that catch the frost and dew and make for more interest in the garden than bare soil ever could.
Perhaps this was the turning point for my love of design.
WINTER GARDENING W/ LE SAC
Looking at a garden devoid of flowers and colour needn't be dismal. Axis lines, paths leading off into who knows where, a carefully placed piece of sculpture at the end of a long vista, a seat looking out onto fabulous borrowed landscape and most vital of all, the use of curated space.
Edna Walling could make the smallest garden look ten times its size through the use of garden rooms: areas of paving, lawn or gravel surrounded by plants, with a path leading off into yet another pocket of space. A glimpse of something beyond in each area, drawing you further in so that you can walk through every part of your garden without ever having to turn back.
This can be a wonderful winter diversion on days when it's too miserable to go outside. Draw a rough sketch of your garden and trace a walking line through every area, without doubling back on yourself.
Or better still, rug up and go outside. Start at the front entrance and walk through your garden as though you've never been there before. See if it's possible to reach every corner without retracing your steps.
You might be surprised by what you find.
Trisha xx
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