When the ground is frozen and the leaves have dropped, what does your landscaping look like? A barren wasteland? Then you’re not doing it right.
A few smart landscape design moves can offer winter landscape interest that will change how you feel about your yard in winter.
How do you design a landscape that looks good in winter? Layer planting beds with evergreens that provide color and texture all year. Don’t cut back your ornamental grasses, but leave their dried seed heads and fluffy plumes for winter interest. Include trees and shrubs with bright fruits and berries that offer beauty through the winter. Fill planters with evergreen boughs and berry branches.
Kirk Jeppesen, landscape designer at Outback, has a host of pro ideas to share.
Keep reading to learn more about winter landscaping ideas.
One Bed, Four SeasonsThink of your planting beds as evolving spectacles that look great year-round. That goes for your big planters, too.
“We install a lot of transitional annual beds and annual pots,” Jeppesen says. “In the spring, we use hardy plants like violas, pansies, snapdragons and sometimes dianthus. We swap those out in the summer for other varieties. Then in the fall, we use ornamental cabbage, grasses, and mums.”
The plants change with the seasons to offer intriguing views year-round.
Winter landscaping interest is trickier, Jeppesen says, but not impossible.
He loves how evergreens offer the perfect winter framework when everything else dies back. They offer four-season color and structure when other plants are dormant.
Evergreens are also great for reducing noise, offering privacy, and providing protection from icy wind and snow drifts.
Mix different shapes, sizes, and textures, from boxwoods to junipers to spruce trees.
Outback landscape designer Kim Rubert loves ‘Bird’s Nest’ spruce, a dwarf, slow-growing evergreen shrub shaped like a bird’s nest, and ‘Skyrocket’ juniper, which grows up to 20 feet tall but stays a skinny 3 feet wide.
“Pines and spruces are our go to,” Jeppesen says, “but we can mix in color variations with blue or gold-toned junipers.”
Branch out with blue and yellow. A few Jeppesen favorites for adding pretty blue and yellow hues in the winter landscape:
The silvery-blue hue of this semi-dwarf spruce isn't found on many other evergreens, and it stands up well to everything an Idaho winter dishes out — extreme cold, high wind, snow, salt — even hungry deer. It checks all the boxes for Idaho Falls landscape design.
Juniper ‘Wichita Blue’ has a beautiful blue-gray color all year long. No worries about hungry deer with this shrub, but the birds will thank you — they love the silvery blue berries. In a hurry? It’s a speedy grower, adding 6 to 12 inches a year to your winter landscape.
Those striking blue-green to silvery-blue needles on blue-hued evergreens are often caused by a waxy coating that reflects light.
Several junipers offer your winter landscape a cheerful dose of yellow foliage, including the varieties ‘Gold Coast,’ ‘Old Gold’ and ‘Gold Lace.’
Which plants still look good in winter? Here in Idaho Falls, not many. Some of the prettiest plants don’t last all year. That’s why Jeppesen loves layering plants, mixing in perennials that might look great for a season or two with varieties like evergreens that hold up year-round.
“Layering ensures the design looks intentional all year round, not bare when the flowers fade,” he says. “Each season has something unique to offer.”
Jeppesen shares three favorites:
“Red-twig dogwoods add a red stem color that looks pretty against the snow,” he says.
This landscape beauty is deciduous, so it loses its leaves in the fall. But you’re rewarded with its striking red twigs in the winter. You’ll love it all year, actually. It has pretty white flowers in the summer.
Crabapple trees lose their leaves in the fall but their colorful fruit in reds, golds and yellows hangs on through the winter, offering pretty splashes of color against the white snow and gray sky.
And once those leaves drop, they reveal intriguing sculptural branches with striking winter appeal.
Bonus: that fruit, once you’re done admiring it, is a great food source for birds and other wildlife during the winter months, when they have a tough time rounding up meals.
Which plants still look good in winter? It helps if it has pretty berries. This hardy shrub has lots to offer year-round — glossy leaves, delicate spring flowers that attract butterflies and, in some cases, pretty fall foliage.
What about winter? Cotoneaster offers an abundance of beautiful clusters of red or black berries that hang on through the winter and offer a bright splash of color against the snow. Until the birds eat them. Hey, a bird’s gotta eat.
If you’re tempted to cut back your graceful ornamental grasses once fall rolls around, please don’t.
These landscaping workhorses will offer you texture, movement, and color all winter. Their dried seed heads and feathery plumes can glow in the winter light and provide a comforting sound as they rustle in the wind.
Enjoy them all winter as part of your Idaho Falls landscape design, Jeppesen says, “then cut them back in spring."
Which plants look great all year long? A few ornamental grasses work especially well for landscaping winter interest:
This blue-hued ornamental grass is a stunner all summer, with its flowers tipped with golden, oat-like seed heads. But it keeps its attractive light brown fall color right through the winter.
A four-season winner for your Idaho landscape, this award-winning grass looks great year-round.
Spring brings fresh green leaf blades. During the summer, feathery, pinkish plumes appear. Tan seed heads form in the fall, drying out and lasting through winter.
This one’s a stunner, with bamboo-like foliage and pretty seed heads that dangle from arched stems.
The seed heads attract birds and add great texture and interest to the winter landscape.
This native grass is prized for its blue-green leaf color that offers attractive color all season long.
In fall, it turns a striking reddish-bronze, with tufted seed heads that impress right through the winter.
Those big planters that spend the summer packed with tropical trees and plants don’t have to head to the garage for the winter.
Swap in evergreens like glossy boxwood or red-berried holly.
Assorted pine branches can make a big statement in your winter planters, too, offering all kinds of great texture against the snow.
Some pine needles are long, some are fuzzy, and some have pine cones. The lacy texture of juniper with its deep blue berries is completely different from the fluffy boughs of white pine.
Mix it up. Pack those planters with a creative and textural mix of evergreen boughs, tall, twiggy branches, and sprigs of crimson berries.
Add twinkling white lights and you're ready for the holidays.
Don’t count out your hardscape elements as sources of winter interest ideas in the landscape.
Paver paths, stone walls, garden benches, sculpture, charming pergolas, trellises and arbors add structure and texture all winter long.
“Decorative boulders also add interest until the snow covers them,” Jeppesen says.
And don’t leave them in the dark.
Don’t forget the magical effect of landscape lighting on your winter landscape.
Remember, it gets dark earlier in the winter months, so you get even more from your outdoor lighting.
Professionally designed and installed landscape lighting transforms trees, plants and hardscape elements into an artwork of light and shadow for winter landscaping interest.
Highlight favorite trees that boast interesting branches or bark; artistic garden sculptures; your architectural arbor or pergola.
Uplights can make a huge difference in your winter landscape. They’re installed on the ground close to the base of your subject to spread a cascade of light.
Lighting a pretty tree from the ground up shows off its interesting bark and branch structure against the snow. Lighting a landscape structure from below adds drama and can create interesting shadows.
Landscape lighting isn’t just for your summer landscaping when you’re sitting outside. It can transform your view when you’re looking at it from inside, too.
Does your yard look like the barren Antarctic once the snow flies? That’s no good.
How do you design a landscape that looks good in winter?
We’d love to help. Let’s add intriguing evergreens for winter-long appeal, some layered beds and planters that change with the seasons and some hard-working hardscape elements that hold their own all year. Need some creative landscape lighting to cast it all in a cozy glow? You got it.
Outback Landscape is a full-service landscaping company offering innovative landscape design in Idaho Falls. We install beautiful, functional landscapes and stay with you for the long haul, taking care of your property through all four seasons.
We serve residential and commercial properties in Idaho Falls, Rexburg and Pocatello, Idaho, and Bonneville, Madison and Bannock counties. Call us at 208-656-3220 or schedule a no-obligation meeting with one of our team members. We can’t wait to hear from you.
Image Sources | Planter Pot in Winter, Juniper, Redtwig Dogwood, Crabapple, Cotoneaster, Little Bluestem