Plants for All Seasons

Wintersweet and More

One of my favorite winter activities is a weekend visit to the US National Arboretum in Washington DC.  It reminds you over and over again that plants don't really have to be in leaf or flower to have real presence in the landscape.  You could smell the fragrance of Chimonanthus praecox, shown here, from yards away, and the very pale yellow flowers were simply gorgeous against the clear blue sky.

I even admired the feathery structure of the bare Mock Orange and vowed to plant one at the house up in Massachusetts, where there's a lot more room.  This one, in the Arboretum's Asian Valley, had the added attraction of a well-structured bird's nest, which will disappear as soon as the leaves emerge.

We strolled through the hollies, always one of the winter wonders, and then ambled by the magnolia collection, punctuated here and there by brilliant red splashes of winterberry.  We admired the smooth grey bark on the deciduous magnolias and noticed that the sun shining down on the leaves of Magnolia virginiana gave them a silvery, almost ghost-like appearance.

Most everyone who plants ornamental cherry trees puts them in the landscape for the spring show of blooms.  And although I love them when they're in bloom, I think these trees are actually at their height in the dead of winter, because they have a structure like no other tree.  It's light, it's delicate, and it's always a show stopper, even in its barest mode.

The Arboretum in recent years has been beefing up its camellia collection, and we saw several of the Ackerman hybrids, bred particularly to withstand cold temperatures.  Winter's Waterlily, with a pure white bloom, has been around for awhile, but we also like Winter's Fire, shown right, with an almost pure red flower.  The nice thing about the winter-hardy Ackerman hybrids is that they're all derived from the Arboretum's own Camellia oleifera 'Lu Shan Snow,' which some years back survived temperatures of minus 10 degrees F on several occasions.  Depending on the year, these plants might bloom anywhere from November through January, a welcome sight when there's nothing else in flower.

And finally, I implore everyone to plant big trees. 

This is one of the Arboretum's great specimen trees - a willow oak with absolutely perfect form and heart-stopping all year round.  I love the bare branches in winter against the sky, I always pay a visit when the leaves first begin to emerge in early spring, and in summer, its canopy is like no other. 

It's a tree that needs a large landscape to be appreciated, but if you have room anywhere for a large deciduous tree, you should always consider a willow oak as one of your top choices.  The form is classic, and it deserves a place where it can stand alone in all of its magnificence.