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Color for the Winter Garden - Part 1: Groundcovers.

© Carol Wallace

I look out on my garden today, from my perch safe inside, protected from the snow and wind. And all I see is white - acres of it, marred only by the tracks that the chickens have made in their haste to get their morning meal. The hens are all pitch black. The sky is gray - and unfortunately I had the barns painted the same color. It is as though my world has turned into a black and white photo.

Days like this are the ones that make me regret the vast expanses of plain lawn in our yard. If it weren't for the fact that the land itself rises and falls somewhat randomly, it would resemble a blank sheet of typing paper with absolutely nothing interesting on it.

Fortunately, while we do have what I consider to be an excess of lawn, we also have what my husband no doubt considers to be an excess of gardens. But at this time of year we are both grateful for those. They are all that give form and texture to this black and white world. And sometimes they even offer color.

By spring we - and almost everyone else on this half of the planet will be absolutely famished for color. That's the only way I can explain the ubiquitous and to me hideous gardens of red and yellow tulips that spring up everywhere. To me they resemble the colors of a fast food place - and that is what they are - food for the color starved. Every year I hope - in vain - that these gardeners would discover some other equally colorful plantings - such as bright yellow daffodils and blue muscari, or orange and blue.

Spring is the one time of year when almost anything is better than the elusive all white garden - but of course spring is the only time of year that I have managed to create one. White tulips, daffodils and muscari, snowdrops - and the abundant blossoms of the old apple tree under which they are planted. By spring we really need a relief from whiteness.

That is why, about this time every year I start thinking about year-round color in the gardens.

Most of the year having something live and colorful in the garden is so simple as to be almost inevitable. But winter is not so easy. However, the situation is not hopeless, even if on days like this it seems as though all the color has been sucked from the landscape.

	ajuga	wintercreeper	heuchera	veronica
veronica incana	lamium	wooly thyme		sedum
	woodruff

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