Create Your Own Four-Season Garden
Landscaping Think of your four-season garden as a roomlike enclosure of small trees and tall shrubs framing the walls and supplying the "furniture," larger trees providing a canopied roof, and a floor carpeted with lawn and beds of herbaceous plants. The plants in this "room," must have year-round presence to hold the design together. You'll need a balance of deciduous and evergreen plants that complement one another in shape, substance, and mood. Then fill in with plants that display their best in all the different seasons. Begin your planning in winter. The evergreens and the deciduous shrubs and trees stripped of their foliage, will reveal the inherent structure of your garden. You may find that many of your plants already have seasonal strengths of their own— brightly colored berries, fascinating bark patterns, or dormant foliage that whispers and shivers in the breeze. You may only need to move plants around to play their winter colors, textures, and f...