Down with Dormancy!
How to shop for and site plants that will enliven your garden’s quiet season.
It bears repeating: The only way to have a year-round garden is to plan and plant for it. Too often, our beds and borders reflect planting whims limited to the active growing season – after all, that’s when we’re shopping at nurseries. Distracted by flowering shrubs and perennials, it’s easy to overlook choice fall and winter plants.
Right about now, what would you rather see? Dormant hydrangeas and bare mulch where the hostas lie dormant, or the crystalline white blossoms and glossy evergreen foliage of Camellia sasanqua ‘Setsugekka’ and the earliest blooms of various Helleborus nigra? The persistent fruit of persimmons and crabapples like Malus transitoria Golden Raindrops™ or M. ‘Adirondack’, and the purple berries on beautyberry (Callicarpa bodinieri var. giraldii ‘Profusion’) are seasonal showstoppers deserving of their garden footprint.
Jim Fox, expert plantsman and long-time buyer for Wells Medina, knows a thing or two about shopping for plants that perform during the quieter months of the year. It’s true, fall inventory levels aren’t what they are during the busy season, and you may have to put your name on a wait list for that beautyberry, but discoveries await those who go looking for them.
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