When I visit garden centers in the spring and summer I seem to have a hard time remembering to buy plants that will carry my garden through the winter. I forget all about my intention to buy a cartload of evergreens when I walk down an aisle of any other plant coming into leaf or bloom. I’m sure I’m not alone. (Or am I?) But it didn’t take a very long walk around Blithewold in this frigid weather to find that there are plenty of plants that could catch my eye at the nursery – and keep a good hold of it now.

I get sweetspire (Itea virginica) and summersweet (Clethra alnifolia) completely confused in my head, always thinking one is the other. I wish, back when I bought a clethra for my garden that I had remembered that it’s itea that colors up so beautifully in the fall and waves red flags right into December. (Of course I do love that clethra blooms almost by itself in August…) Oak leaf hydrangea is also stunningly multicolored in the cold.

Gail confuses agave and yucca, which is so funny because their differences are very obvious to me. (Of course they are in the same family and Gail’s the one who keeps clethra and itea straight for me.) And while I generally think agaves are the coolest plants, it’s yucca that can take the cold.

It never occurred to me that Toad lily (Tricyrtis hirta) could be as beautiful in seed as it is in bloom. And I think the purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea ‘Variegata’), with its curly blond tresses, is even more beautiful dormant than it ever was growing.

I have a deep appreciation for the evergrey of lavender – and have planted quite a few of those in my garden but I never noticed before today how silvery the slender deutzia (Deutzia gracilis ‘Nikko’) is.

What plants are carrying your garden into December?

It’s too easy to lose sight of the garden at this time of year. It’s freezing cold; we’ve gone indoors; we’re focused on the holidays. But what I realized the other day, when I took a walk through the garden is that this might be the very best time to really see the garden clearly – and not just because of the transparency of defoliation. Red and green might be the iconic colors of December but gardeners and nature lovers see a whole range of hues in our field of vision. December is rendered in quiet earth-tones like verdigris, ochre, charcoal, pewter, Payne’s grey and raw umber as well as about a million different shades of deep green, and gem-like crimsons. Most of December’s colors fill the background at other times of year – barely visible for being easily overlooked, but they are the foreground now. And that inside-out color shift seems to turn all of the other colors on the wheel into precious pigments of our imagination.

I can mentally picture the garden – my own especially – as I’d like it to be in all seasons, much more easily now than when it’s filled with summer and fall colors – but while I can still remember them; and before the garden is beautified by snow’s contrast or full of the distraction of spring’s hopes. And the ideas flow even more freely as I walk around Blithewold where I can plainly see the plants and colors that would make my own December garden more complete. And I have this hunch (call me crazy but I get to see these gardens every day so I know whereof I speak) that a garden that is sublime in December is bound to be beautiful the whole year round. I’ll save specific examples for a later post.

Are you looking at your garden right now? What do you see?

One of our most frequently asked questions is if we have a problem with deer. I can very clearly remember being able to say cheerfully, “No – we don’t!” Even though when I said it I always crossed my fingers and knocked wood, and always had compassion for other gardeners’ woes and tried not to gloat, over the last probably 5 or so years, I’m now sorry to say that the deer have finally clued in that this is prime real estate. They have nosed around our tulips eating a few buds here and there, tromped through garden beds as if they were pathways, munched hosta like salad greens and sampled a few shrubs and vines, but nothing (yet – knock wood) has been completely demolished. I know we’re very lucky.

That said, this fall a buck moved in. He has marked his territory like a cat does, though much more destructively, by rubbing his antlered scent glands on a few young trees. And of course this doesn’t do the trees any good at all. He has scraped clear through the bark to the tender cambium, wrecking the tree’s ability to transport water from the roots to its leaves. If he had rubbed around the circumference, the trees would surely die. As it is they may not be able to fully recover and thrive and some are young enough that even a little damage is too much, sadly.

I caught the blurry Sasquatch-like shot of our fellow leaving the property around mid-day. That’s an unusual time for a sighting but I think he may have been flushed from his bed by the machinery (if not the machinations) of Fred and Dan blowing leaves near the summerhouse. I know they are worried about Blithewold’s trees and would be glad to see the backside of our buck, gone for good.

Do you have a problem with deer in your garden too?