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Perennial Foliage For Early Winter

© Marge Talt

The tree and shrub leaves have drifted over my borders and most perennials in my garden have retreated underground, or into tight rosettes, for the winter. Nevertheless, a jaunt around the garden found several perennials whose leaves are still very much in evidence; aiding the evergreen trees and shrubs in furnishing the early winter garden.

As I have recently seen several posts, on various gardening email lists, wondering what to plant so that the garden doesn't look bare after the first killing frost, I thought some of you might like to meet some of the plants in my USDA zone 7 garden who fill that bill. This week, we'll have a mini garden tour. You'll need to use a bit of imagination, because the photographs were taken at season's height, so the changes in foliage aren't illustrated. Some of the plants you'll see will maintain foliage all winter, if the winter isn't too severe, and some will fade away once temperatures stay in the 20s or 30s F (-6 or -1C) consistently.

Pachysandra terminalis, the work-horse of groundcovers for shady areas, really comes into its own in winter. During the height of the gardening season, it recedes into the background like grass. But, when most everything else is sere and brown, Pachysandra's smooth, dark, green leaves offer welcome relief. No weather that Mother Nature has thrown at my garden has ever fazed it. Plant it under trees or as a base for shrubs. It sets off interesting branch formations on deciduous woody plants and extends the green of evergreen ones. Vinca spp. will also retain foliage until really bad weather sets in, some exhibiting more evergreen tendencies than others.

Also evergreen and tending to fade into the woodwork by midsummer is Polystichum acrostichoides. Although the fronds flatten toward the ground in winter, mature clumps can occupy a circle three feet (1 meter) or more in diameter. The fronds lay down in a fairly orderly fashion and, other than collecting fallen leaves, remain visibly green. Any of the several evergreen ferns would give the same effect in the winter garden. One can't have too many ferns, in my opinion.

Cold weather brings on interesting color changes in many plants. Lamiastrum galeobdolon is one of them. The dark green center of each leaf takes on varying shades of burgundy, making a tri-color leaf of green, pewter and burgundy. Particularly hard winters will brown the leaves and require some cutting back in spring, but they will look good all winter in milder areas.

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