How to chase the winter blues out of your garden

It is all too often the case that landscape and garden designers, out of a zealousness for flowers, overlook the beauty that can be carried through winter by selecting certain shrubs and perennials with long lasting pizazz.

Here are some of my favorites.

Colored-twig dogwoods (Cornus sericea) are also a fantastic choice for winter color. When they lose their leaves, they reveal bright red, yellow, or orange stems that show off well against a backdrop of dormant grasses or evergreen shrubs. And the display's not limited to outdoors, either, since the cut stems last a long time in a vase or a holiday wreath. Colored-twig dogwoods grow in full sun to part shade and reach about 4-10' tall and wide, depending on the variety.

Ornamental grasses are a great additions to a winter garden, and not only the evergreen varieties. Many grasses go dormant gracefully, leaving a fluffy mass of brown strands that look surprisingly at home among winter annuals and other color. Evergreen grasses include sedges like Carex 'Toffee Twist', variegated sweet flag (Acorus gramineus 'Variegata'), and silver spear (Astelia chathamica 'Silver Spear'), while fountain grass (Pennisetum) and dwarf varieties of maiden grass (Miscanthus) make a great show in dormancy.

Cotoneaster (Cotoneaster apiculata and 'Hessii') is a must if you have walls or walkways it can crawl upon.  The berries over the winter months add a little holiday spirit.

I find that homeowners are reluctant when we want to leave Annabelle Hydrangea up over the winter, but it looks so much better than an empty bed.  And the older the species, the more blooms and stalks, the better the winter show.