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Solstice a time to reflect on winter gardens - winter reading

Observe the winter solstice. This day marks the beginning of winter and has the shortest period of daylight. In the northeast they seem to be experiencing global warming first hand, perhaps there should be a change in our attitudes toward this fourth season and what, as gardeners, we should expect and attempt, perhaps the landscape should no longer be ignored for four months out of every year.

Adrian Bloom, an English nurseryman, writer, gardener and introducer of new plant cultivars, is known to gardeners in the U.S. as a talented designer and principal of Blooms of Bressingham. One of his books, “Winter Garden Glory, How to get the Best from your Garden from Autumn through to Spring,” is a jewel! Using the plants and landscape design of “Foggy Bottom,” his home property, Bloom shows by word and picture just how foliage form and color used properly can enliven any winter scene.

Can we safely make use of all the plants he uses and recommends? No, not yet, anyway, but even if we were to incorporate 10 percent of his recommendations into our landscape, we would raise the interest of our landscapes by several hundred percent. Also look for the companion volume, “Summer Garden Glory.”

By obtaining both, you will save time later when you realize you desire more views of Foggy Bottom and more wisdom from Bloom.

A second book is “Color in the Winter Garden” by Graham Stuart Thomas. As an aside, if you value your time and your garden, spend some time this winter with Thomas. Read and enjoy “Three Gardens, The personal odyssey of a great plantsman and gardener,” then perhaps “The Manual of Shrub Roses” or “Roses as Flowering Shrubs” and on to “Treasured Perennials,” in which he discusses more than 200 perennials.

But I digress. We need to look at “Color in the Winter Garden” a book so exhaustive it has been called the most comprehensive book on the subject. To receive the greatest value from this work, do not consider it as a laundry list of plants but rather an eye-opening experience as to what a winter garden can be, if you will make the effort.
Get ready. Get set. Get reading!