It sounds ominous, but what they were really talking about is structure. Not necessarily a structure that you buy or build, but something that gives permanent shape and texture to your yard. Yes, arbors, gazebos, walls and other man-made artifacts can be garden bones. But luckily for those of us not terribly skilled with hammers and saws, trees, shrubs and evergreen perennials also qualify.
Imagine your garden under a blanket of snow, the way mine is right now. Does it look blank? Or are their lumps, humps and bumps that give your yard texture and variety?
I thought I understood bones when I selected the plants for my first garden. I bought a couple of rose bushes and a red twigged dogwood. These were the permanent elements in my garden. Unfortunately, although they do create humps on snow, but so widely spaced in the bed that they only underscore the huge expanses of apparently bare dirt between them.
So my basic bones were too timid, so that in winter that garden really suffers from my timidity.
Bones are the permanent elements in the garden,
Annuals and perennials are more like filler material - lovely, but fleeting. They may be slow to emerge in spring, and quick to go dormant in fall, so that for two or three seasons we spend time waiting for them to come in and make the garden beautiful. But wouldn't it be better to have four seasons of interest?
To do that, you need bigger bones - enough permanent residents in the bed that it has shape, texture and color throughout the year. Let's examine the different plants that we can use to do the job so well that your flowers - annuals and perennials alike - are more like beautiful fillers that give you variety in the warm months. They should not be such an essential part of your garden that you really miss them in winter.
Plants that give your garden structure fall into three types.
- First we have evergreen trees and shrubs. They may change color with the seasons, but their overall form doesn't change greatly over time.
- Then we have dormant trees and shrubs that may shed their leaves but which provide berries to attract the birds, and colorful twigs for winter interest.
- Finally we have trees that may lack fruits or colorful bark, but which have such interesting shapes that they function as living sculptures. Also in this category are shrubs that offer fragrance - something many of us keenly miss in winter.
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