Native Evergreens Offer Year Round Interest

By: Stacey Wildberger

Looking out the winter window can sometimes be depressing if you haven’t planned for a winter landscape. There are several things you can do that will give your eye something to feast upon in the dead of the winter.  The first thing you need to do is re-think pretty and learn to appreciate the beauty in the brown.  Leaving your stems stand throughout the winter, resisting the urge to cut everything down to the ground in the fall will create interest.  The brown seed heads are something to behold, especially when the snow comes and clings to them.  Another step you can take is to plant some native evergreens in your gardens to create interest.  The color green in various shades to break up the browns will offer a stimulating view.  Here are a few that will be native to us.

Ilex opaca American Holly is beautiful evergreen, fruiting tree reaching heights of 25-60’ high. The bright red berries appear on the female (you need a male nearby to get fruit) that is devoured by many song birds from robins, cardinals and even cedar waxwings.

Magnolia grandilflora Southern magnolia is a broadleaf flowering evergreen that will reach 60-80’ in height and offers a fragrant white bloom in spring that will look beautiful in the winter sky.

Juniperus virginiana Eastern red cedar one of my favorite evergreen trees because the blackish-green berries attract one of my favorite birds, the cedar waxwing!  From the berries to the horizontal evergreen branches to the reddish-brown exfoliating bark this 30-65’ tree will create a site to behold throughout the winter.

Ilex glabra inkberry is a broadleaf shrub growing 5-8’ in height and producing a dark ink colored berry attractive to many birds as well.  It can used as a shrub border and allow to naturalize, creating a barrier and nesting area for many birds as well.

All the way down at the ground level we find my favorite year round evergreen ground cover Packera aurea golden ragwort.  These evergreen basal leaves will stay green throughout most if not all the winter in our region, creating not only an effective weed control but a refreshing green carpet to feast our eyes on a drab winter day.  The plant will throw up a spike in early spring and be one of the first bloomers.  The bright yellow flower will make you smile as the garden is beginning to wake up from its winter nap.

There are several other groundcover plants that will hold their color throughout the winter and offer the same weed suppression.  Penstemon digitalis foxglove beardtongue, Heuchera americana coral bells (see picture at the top),  Tiarella cordifolia foamflower, Phlox subulata Moss phlox, Chrysogonum virginianum green and gold and even the common violets Viola sp. that many of us pull up and consider weeds are a beautiful evergreen presence in the garden and a wonderful host plant to the fritillary butterfly in the spring