I’m a big fan of good bark, stem color, and fruit in the winter garden. At my former Loomis Creek Nursery in New York’s Hudson Valley, we used willows, shrubby dogwoods, and winterberry hollies with great abandon. Even here in Portland, OR, with a shorter, benign winter and more coniferous landscape, I still promote using these plant genera to brighten up winter gardens. And you can have lots of fun with spray paint… in an artful, controlling way. My garden spray-painting is influenced by Edith Edelman, curator of the 300′ long x 18′ deep Perennial Border at the JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, NC… I’ll have to dig up those slides and post. The JC Raulston Arboretum Perennial Border’s design is based upon the color scheme used by Gertrude Jekyll in her long border at her home, Munstead Wood. It begins with grays and silvers, moves into pastels and from pastels to more saturated colors, culminating in “gorgeousness” presenting intense golds, scarlets, and reds. Just imagine what fun you could have spray-painting ornamental grasses and perennials left standing in the winter garden.

Here is some of my work this winter in my own garden and at the Mountain Top Arboretum.

Winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata ‘Winter Red’) mass planted in my “HEDGEROW” design for Mountain Top Arboretum, Tannersville, NY (below).

Spray-painted Allium schubertii against the zigzaggy, wicked stems of Rosa pteracantha in my Harborton Hill, Portland garden.

Spray-painted Allium bulgaricum (Nectaroscordum siculum) drifting through wiry, etched stems of Carex testacea (orange sedge) in a matrix of light, fluffy snow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dried cardoons (Cynara cardunculus) that I hit with a can of pink spray paint…  looking like giant snowcones in Portland’s unusual snow and ice storm, February 6-9, 2014.  BTW, I was a grad student of JC Raulston (we won’t say what decade!) and remember well working in the fledging JC Raulston Arboretum… hence, my spray-painting influence.