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WHAT winter color??

© Carol Wallace

These days when I wake I am treated to a blaze of glorious color from a sugar maple - the best and brightest on the property - which grows in perfect view of my bedroom window. But every morning the blaze grows smaller. The leaves are dropping; the skies have gone from brilliant blue to their usual slate gray. Soon the world will be reduced to shades of brown, gray and white.

I have probably read every book ever written on color in the winter garden. They all swear that you, too, can have a glorious four-season garden, rich with winter interest. What they fail to mention is that if you live in zone 6 or lower, most of the winter interest won't bloom until March or April when the crocuses are out anyway. Or will be eaten by the birds almost as soon as the first snow falls.

So we cold-climate people have to make the best of what we have. It won't be a riot of color - but it's better than plain black and white. And there are other ways to be interesting besides being merely colorful.

My main concern, winter interest-wise, is with the view from my sunroom window. This is the area of the yard we see most often and easily, and so that is where I have tucked all the early blooming spring bulbs, and all the hellebores. Not that I'll see any signs of bloom until late March.

Helleborus foetidus does put out chartreuse-colored buds in late winter. They aren't terribly colorful, but they hold such promise of good things to come that I treasure them, as well as the fat buds that the magnolias put out even before they have dropped their leaves. Rhododendrons also carry fat buds of promise.

Next to the side door is a Daphne,'Carol Mackie'. Catalogs assure me that this is a winter bloomer. Not here - it blooms after the crocus. I have it by the side door because of its fragrance in early spring, and because it holds its leaves, green, margined in yellow, like little splashes of sunlight. Every little bit helps.

The 'Royal Velvet' ajuga holds its color all year, and provides a somber note of metallic purple and green if there is no snow to hide it, and the woodruff stays green. So do all of the other hellebores, and the Euphorbia purpurea.

And then there is the new hedge of colored twig dogwoods, red and orange and gold, that I am hoping will lend some brightness to the landscape. Not only that, but they have form and texture - all important in a yard where most of the major plantings seem to go dormant when the cold weather hits. Other than that, I have to learn to love the look of mulch and frozen grass. If it weren't for the dogwoods, the best I could say for my winter interest garden is that it has changed winter from a black and white time to one of purple and green and brown.

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