State of the Winter Garden

Hello, readers! Today I want to dish on dirt - the dirt of my landscape garden and its winter state. 

We moved here in October 2021, and I've been working on overhauling the landscape ever since. 

Pictured below is what my front beds looked like on January 26, 2024, the second of two really nice, warm days where our temps hit the low 60s (F), and I was out there weeding! This was just after nearly 8" of snow melting.

Here's the way things looked just one week prior in our landscape, on January 19, 2024. 

And that photo above was after I had brushed all the snow off the shrubs, and paths had been shoveled.

I'm still babying those boxwoods, to prevent further burn like we experienced in last year's arctic blast, so getting snow off of the shrubs was necessary. I didn't even trim my boxwoods last year, giving them every opportunity to recover..

In my last landscape update, I wrote about amending a section of grass. All in all, I'm very pleased with the most recent changes of amending that patch of grass on the north-facing side yard. EXCEPT....just one problem arose, brought on by the compost I had added to all my beds last fall, and a topsoil/compost mix in the amended grass bed..

Looking at the top right frame of the collage above, you can see sprouts of the weed later identified as upland cress in the mulch (and it sprouted in that newest grass patch), below the pansies and right at the edge of the grass. I dug out three grocery bags FULL of that stuff on January 25-26, and posted it on a community Facebook page, asking for help identifying it. I suppose it will be this year's lily-of-the-valley. {sigh}

The state of other plants through last year's growing season are doing well. I did some winter pruning that last week of January and this past week. The most significant was with my St. John's Wort.

I also pruned my Jackmanii clematis I planted last year, and added a new trellis (purchased late last fall) for it to grow on this year. New buds were already swelling on it.

Several perennials are ideally cut back in late winter, and timing varies by your zone. In my zone 7a, I have several plants already showing new growth (lavender, skip laurels, purple gem rhododendron, and butterfly bushes), and bulbs pushing up dirt -  irises, wood hyacinths, daffodils, and snowdrops. It's exciting to see any and all of them, as many are newly planted or newly transplanted. It's also a good time for me to prune the St John's Wort, clematis, lavender, butterfly and serviceberry, before new growth takes off. I've also cleaned up my hydrangeas and spirea of their fall flower heads. I'm waiting another month or so before pruning my roses. 

January-February 2024 winter growth (clockwise, from top L): iris, clematis, lavender, daffodils, rhododendron, skip laurel.

I'm going with the old adage insofar as gardens go: the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, and the third year they leap.  I have plants in all stages of this, and also a few mature plantings which I kept from the prior owner's original installation.  

Right after Christmas, Proven Winners ran a 20% off all plants sale, and I placed an order for a several perennials as well as annuals that I want to install this year. The perennials include mostly compact selections for my cottage-sized garden.

Cardinal flower is a native plant here in West Virginia. It attracts bees and hummingbirds, and I'm hoping the area I've chosen to plant it will let it thrive.

Pride and Joy sedum will be a new variety for me. I chose it for its color and growth habit (shorter, mounded). I had Autumn Joy in my previous landscape, and it was a bit large for my cottage landscape.

I have one Bobo hydrangea already, and after three different transplants, it's a survivor! I bought one more plant to either add some heft to the one I already have, or to plant elsewhere. 

I also bought two Wedding Party Confettis Cake hellebores. I wish I had these already, so I could enjoy their blooms now! 

All of these plants won't ship until mid-April. Proven Winners had not updated their zone maps for shipping to the newest 2023 USDA Zone Plant Hardiness Map, and my plants were originally scheduled to ship the third week of April. I called and they changed it to mid-April for me.

I also ordered several annuals, which are typically hit or miss for me locally, because I want to plant sooner than nurseries are stocking them. I ordered the following, anticipating various ideas for containers and even front annual beds where my pansies are currently.

Two purple fountain grasses are in my order, one for each container I'm planning. The supertunia bermuda beach and diamond frost are one combo idea. Diamond frost does well in both containers and landscape beds.

I had superbena sparkling amethyst in containers last year and loved them, so I ordered those. I bought heliotrope also for containers, and made the combo pictured below as another idea. Heliotrope smells SO good, a bit like almond!

Again, I mixed diamond frost in another combination idea, this time with purple queen, which I've ordered, and also used before in my landscape beds. I would likely put geraniums with this combination, which are readily available by April in local nurseries.  

As you can tell, I am anxious to get outside and get in the dirt! In the meantime, I've been nurturing an amaryllis kit my sweet neighbor across the street gifted me for Christmas, and it's doing well!

I also bought grocery flowers and enjoyed a few bouquets blooming in January.

Turning the calendar page from January to February prompted my changing the front door wreath and garden flag, too, from winter snowballs and chickadees to pansies and hearts. 

What's new in your garden zone? Leave me a comment, let me know what you've been doing or plan to do this year, even if it's just admiring your neighbor's garden!

Thanks for your visit. I enjoy each and all of them, and your comments too.

Rita C. at Panoply

A sincere thank you to Barbara from French Ethereal Share Your Style #418 for featuring this post!

Parties I Share With: Pieced Pastimes, Love Your Creativity, BNOTP, My Wee Abode, My Family Thyme, French Ethereal SYS,  Eclectic Red Barn TFT, My Thrift Store Addiction, Our Hopeful Home, Karin's Kottage, County Road 407 Farmhouse Friday