Illustration by Hayden Gresak
Forget pansies and ornamental kale. Give winter’s weary workhorses a rest. Cold weather calls for a container garden that is exuberant and bold, barely restrained by its container. “Make a statement,” says Mary Petres, owner of Manchester Gardening in Richmond. “Use the same principles of design that you always do, but with lots of impact.” Plant something unpredictable in a pot.
To take the tedium out of her winter designs, Petres borrows from a palette of perennials and evergreens. She uses shrubs, ferns and grasses — smaller versions of popular plants that she buys in quart, gallon and three-gallon-size pots, which are just the right scale for a container garden. When the plants outgrow a container or go dormant, she transplants them into the yard and fills the vacant space with something new.
Petres starts with a big pot. “Just be sure the container is in proportion to the space,” she notes. Metal, fiberglass or resin are good choices because they won’t break. She recommends all-purpose potting soil with slow-release fertilizer; if you’re planting evergreens, mix one-third compost with two-thirds potting soil to feed the roots and give weight to the container. “Watering is critical,” she says. “Wind and cold will suck moisture out of plants. Most perennials will stay pretty through the winter if you keep them watered.
“I choose plants with a look and feel that fits the client’s taste and the style of the home,” she says about her design choices. Petres follows the classic “thriller, filler, spiller” rule, always beginning with the “thriller,” or focal point. Typically the tallest plant in the pot, a thriller catches the eye and pulls the viewer in. “Try Japanese maple,” she suggests. “They lose their leaves in winter, but the architecture is beautiful.” Add branches of curly willow for drama, a tall spire of arborvitae or juniper, or a column of sky pencil holly. She even uses evergreen ferns for height — autumn fern, with its tall, bronze-orange to green fronds; a fountain of Christmas fern; or glossy green tassel fern all grow up to two feet tall.
Petres looks for contrast when she chooses the “filler” plants that will populate the middle ground in a pot. “I’m big on texture, lots of different textures,” she says. Needled evergreens such as juniper, chamaecyparis and arborvitae provide texture, in contrast to broad-leaf evergreens like boxwood, holly or camellias, whose smooth surfaces give the eye a resting place. Petres uses heuchera for color in the winter. Available in apricot, bronze, purple, burgundy and chartreuse, heuchera will typically last until spring given enough water. “Perennials like hellebores have evergreen foliage and bloom in February,” she adds. They make perfect filler plants.
“Spillers” like ivy, euonymus, creeping Jenny and vinca pour over the edge of the pot, pulling the eye with them. For a punch of bright chartreuse, Petres uses acornus grass or carex grass, the long narrow leaves range from green to blue-gray to variegated. Liriope or juncus also work well.
Even edibles are fun in winter containers. Try Swiss chard or edible kale for height; rosemary, lavender and germander for filler; or thyme, with tiny leaves that collect in a mound and flow over the edge of a pot.
For holiday interest, Petres adds evergreen boughs, magnolia leaves and interesting sticks like red twig dogwood or pine cones. Christmas balls, lights and ribbon are all festive touches that can be pulled out after the holidays. Come spring, she puts the perennials and evergreens in the ground and does something spectacular with a spectrum of summer annuals.
