Adding Structure to Your Garden in the Wintertime

Keith: [00:00:00] Good morning, Keith Ramsey with the Garden Supply Company. It's wintertime in North Carolina. And I always start thinking about structure in the garden in the winter. And you look out and you've got all these vacant spaces or dull spaces, and there are all kinds of things you can do to create structure.

Japanese maple in the wintertime with no leaves on it creates a fair amount of structure. So you can add plants and create the bones of a garden with hedges and screened plants and that kind of thing. And it, that greens the garden up with evergreen hedges and creates life.

That's there 12 months out of the year. And sometimes that plants when you look at plants that are boring it's because they don't do a whole lot, they don't change for the year. Giving them that the green and the [00:01:00] structure 12 months out of the year, really probably do more than something that puts on a big show for two, three weeks, or four weeks.

Something like a chameleon that limbs in the wintertime for two to three months. You create a green hedge behind something and it's there 12 months out of the year. Walkways and stonework are other ways to create structure in the garden. It gives you the definition.

It gives you something to look at what's there and it's there permanently. When you look at the cost of a walkway or a patio sometimes it's not really, something that's gonna last for 20 years or forever. So it's, the cost is not as much as, adding flowers to a garden or something you're going to, you're going to repeat and do over and over just boulders in the garden.

Very low maintenance but create a huge impact. People always hate buying boulders. They always think that you ought to be able to pick them up on the side of the road. Drive out to the mountains and throw on in your trunk, but it's the way that the Boulder and the shipping and the placement of it, but Boulder just adds a great accent to a garden.

And then, dry Creek beds, a lot of times solve [00:02:00] a drainage problem it just creates the definition and a backdrop or foreground for planning and adds a lot of winter interest ponds and streams are the same thing, pond and they add a lot of life to a garden.

It's you've got the running water and you've got you've created that structure and that backdrop for your plants through the year when they're coming and going. And then, the stone would be a one that's extremely low maintenance, not a whole lot to do with it.

Year in, year out. Would is another thing that you can add to do a garden in the wintertime. And when you've got a vacant space or you've got something that's really flat just adding a post or three posts to a garden gives you a place you can grow Vons on gives you some elevation, creating something.

That's got a nice finial on top or, a nice cut on. Or a light post so that you're creating some light in the evening so that you can see the garden and then put vines on it or something that's going to climb on its pieces, offenses or to give you some screen or, just even three sections of [00:03:00] fence, short, sorta short section, like a two or three-foot section that goes, it's either hung out there or that's on a post to give you a backdrop for like a perennial garden.

And then, gates or entryways are. Into new spaces do the same thing. They just create that structure that then in the spring you can come in or later when, or you can come in and plan around.

Yeah. Garden art adds interest. It adds color to all kinds of garden art, probably the most popular garden art that we sell these days is like a window. People are adding that to the garden and that's like a ponder or a fountain and you're adding movement in the garden, which is kinda nice.

That's an easy thing to do in the wintertime, and you're not spending a ton of time outside, but come out, look around, pick one out and then you're literally just stepping into the garden. Or sometimes people put it in a little bit of concrete, but it just it's a steak and it can just go straight into the garden and it adds, you look out and you see that movement.

I've got one in the [00:04:00] middle of a bunch of ornamental grasses. So when it's windy, the grasses are blowing around, and then I've got a windmill effect of the wind art. The other thing is from a focal point and a functional. Is having a fire pit when you look out there it's an inviting piece.

It's a reason to go out into the garden on a cool night. And I've said on another podcast, I love a fire pit when I'm working in the yard. On a fall day and you're picking up sticks and finding guns, you can enjoy the fire pit, but you're also getting rid of the sticks and the pine guns at the same time.

So it's an interactive way to be out in the yard and gardening benches, that, that same kind of scenario. It's a focal point in the garden. And when you look out into the garden and you see a bench it's inviting it's an, it's something inviting to the garden, it's although I find when I have a bench, I spend more time working in the garden or walking around the garden.

Yeah. They're fun to look at for me, but I don't spend a whole lot of time sitting on a bench. But it is a good focal point and, [00:05:00] planning a few plants around the bench and just creating a nice little quiet area parts in a garden is another one. I think most people think about it.

As being functional to hold plants, but structurally they're fun. Do you know what I mean? To do a bigger and in a garden or do a blue glaze pot and the garden adds the plants too. And a plant around it and really create the, using it almost like you would a Boulder. As the structure in a garden and then, a backdrop or a foreground in front of it gives you the color and it gives you a, gives you some in the garden, something to look at.

And then plants are always an easy way to create structure and a fairly low maintenance inexpensive way to do. But now it's just a good time to go to the window, spend some time looking at it on a cold day, walk around mark stuff out, figure out where you need elevation and where you need Heights.

And just get out in the garden. And, even if it's a few minutes here or there come out to the garden center and look around and take a look at stuff [00:06:00] inside and outside. And then pick out a wind feature or a fire pit to create something to enjoy in the garden. And as the weather warms up, we'll see you next time.