Berries, fancy barks add interest to winter landscape

To nongardeners, "the garden in December" may sound like an oxymoron. As we slide into frigid winter, a well-designed landscape can still have a lot to keep it interesting while the plants are sleeping.

Winter might be all silvery-gray elegance iced with frost, but there is still color in landscape. The red of winter berries, yellow catkins, wheat-colored grasses, conifer needles of green, blue, gold and bronze, and newly visible bark and branches in shades of mahogany, nearly black and earthier browns, all foreshadow the start of another cycle of the seasons.

Fruits and berries to attract birds and wildlife

Fruiting trees and shrubs may have berries as early as midsummer, but by including a mix of different genera, species and cultivars, the colorful display can last well into the winter.

Just as weather can affect the quality of the fall color in a particular year, weather can affect the abundance or quality of the fruit display. Also, many fruiting plants require a pollinator or a certain ratio of male to female plants to ensure a good fruit crop.

If your main purpose is to attract birds and wildlife, be sure to select plants that are part of their regular diet. If you are more interested in a long-lasting fruit display, go with fruits that are not as likely to be eaten quickly.

While crabapples may be the most commonly found fruiting trees in our area, many other genera offer very ornamental fruits, bracts or capsules that look like fruits. Serviceberries, bearberries (an evergreen ground cover), chokeberries, barberries, bittersweet, corneliancherry dogwood, hawthorns, miconioides, seven-son flowers, hollies including winterberry holly, spicebush (female plants), common ninebark, peaches, plums and cherries.

Also, alpine currant, (if the rose hips have not been pruned away), hophornbeams, sumacs, elderberries, snowberries, coralberries.

These are just a few examples of fruiting trees and shrubs.

Trees and shrubs with ornamental bark

Bark is as distinctive as foliage and flowers and, on some trees and shrubs, just as eye-catching.

The aristocratic paperbark maple, growing to 30 feet tall with a similar spread, has peeling, papery bark in colors ranging from orangey-brown to bronze to red or red-gold.

Other maples with ornamental bark include the snakebark maple, trident maple, David maple, Japanese maple cultivars including Sango Kaku, the striped maple and the three-flower maple.

Many birches have ornamental bark, and the Heritage river birch is one of the best. Hardy in cold as well as hot climates, with variable fall color that can be an attractive yellow, this birch has much to recommend it, but the peeling bark is what makes it a household name. The exfoliating bark is white and light tan to salmon-pink color on younger trees, changing to a tan to pinkish-brown as the tree matures.

Other trees and shrubs with exfoliating bark or bark with a distinctive texture include cinnamon clethra, yellow buckeye, shagbark hickory, Winter King hawthorn, the corky-like burning bush, seven-son flower, oakleaf hydrangea, amur maackia, American hophornbeam, lacebark pine, Japanese red pine, amur chokecherry, Japanese flowering cherry, Japanese pussy willow, black pussy willow Melanostachys), Japanese fantail willow Sekka), Stewartia spp. and Japanese tree lilac, hackberry and yellowwood.

Other bark stands out in winter because of its color. The redtwig dogwoods are extremely popular for landscape use, particularly those that have bright winter color. Examples include cultivars of the bloodtwig dogwood Viridissima and Winter Flame, the redosier dogwood Flaviramea (sometimes listed as Lutea), Kelseyi, Silver and Gold, Cardinal and Isanti, Tatarian dogwood, Westonbirt, Sibirica, Spaethii and Aurea. The stems of Japanese kerria are an attractive green while Rubus cockburnianus has distinctly different colorful stems. The stems of Salix alba var. vitellina get progressively more colorful as the seasons change from fall to winter. Other willows with colorful stems include S. alba Chermesina and Britzensis.

Careful pruning can enhance the effect of ornamental bark by opening up branching to make the bark more visible. Landscape lighting can also draw attention to attractive bark patterns.