A Celebration of Life in the Winter Garden
A garden designer reflects during this quiet time about how plants can teach us to grow into our best selves
As I’ve aged, it’s become harder to slow down. The forward push of everything is relentless, and the force on my back gets stronger every year. Watching my son grow up, seeing my parents enter their 70s, even witnessing plants come and go in the garden — it seems impossible to celebrate transience and the joyful purpose of rest and renewal. As a guiding metaphor in my life, the romping exuberance of the summer garden would feel less so if it wasn’t for the quiet months of rest and reflection. Sometimes, we have to force ourselves to listen in the stillness.
Everything is connected in ways we can’t possibly see but that we also know and believe. For me, I know it more when I can sit in the garden on a cold, still morning — with a heavy fog or a light snow insulating me — and let my mind wander to a calm harbor, letting go of worries, doubts and fears.
My life is rooted in the same way plants are. My story touches the stories of others, and together we build resilience in the face of rough weather, disease or a changing climate we can’t control on our own.
It’s like sideoats grama’s (Bouteloua curtipendula) fibrous roots holding soil in place, or the taproots of coneflower (Echinacea spp.) and blazing star (Liatris spp.) pushing down even deeper to ease their flowers’ hunger for nutrients. White prairie clover (Dalea candida) provides another example, adding nitrogen to the soil to naturally fertilize those around it, a reminder that we are all cultivating ourselves when we cultivate one another.
My life is rooted in the same way plants are. My story touches the stories of others, and together we build resilience in the face of rough weather, disease or a changing climate we can’t control on our own.
It’s like sideoats grama’s (Bouteloua curtipendula) fibrous roots holding soil in place, or the taproots of coneflower (Echinacea spp.) and blazing star (Liatris spp.) pushing down even deeper to ease their flowers’ hunger for nutrients. White prairie clover (Dalea candida) provides another example, adding nitrogen to the soil to naturally fertilize those around it, a reminder that we are all cultivating ourselves when we cultivate one another.
There’s so much texture and nuance in winter when you leave the plants up — providing countless ecosystem services, from seed and cover for birds to reducing stormwater runoff and helping snow to insulate plants. It’s easy to believe nothing is happening, that there’s little purpose in the winter garden. After all, we’re not inclined to be out there every day in the cold observing and, more importantly, being as still and silent as the decayed remains of our favorite flowers.
It’s not a graveyard — it’s life calling for essential rest. And if we don’t rest, if we don’t have the courage to look inward and feel all the complex emotions we speed by in other times of our lives, we can’t grow and become more adaptable. And we certainly can’t help others do so.
It’s not a graveyard — it’s life calling for essential rest. And if we don’t rest, if we don’t have the courage to look inward and feel all the complex emotions we speed by in other times of our lives, we can’t grow and become more adaptable. And we certainly can’t help others do so.
Is this too much to burden a garden with? I don’t think so. Gardens are stories filled with metaphors. As gardeners, we give our lives to these stories as we are remade inside the narrative.
Plants and wildlife come and go. We bring a bit of ourselves into the space through art and drinks with friends. These are rituals of the growing season. But if you sit on the garden bench in January, huddled in your coat and scarf and wool hat — day after day making a ceremony of stillness echoed by the monochrome textures of brown and slate — you will find life in its fullest measure. It’s a deep breath worth working for, one we start taking months before when we put our hands in the soil and place a community of new plants into their home.
Plants and wildlife come and go. We bring a bit of ourselves into the space through art and drinks with friends. These are rituals of the growing season. But if you sit on the garden bench in January, huddled in your coat and scarf and wool hat — day after day making a ceremony of stillness echoed by the monochrome textures of brown and slate — you will find life in its fullest measure. It’s a deep breath worth working for, one we start taking months before when we put our hands in the soil and place a community of new plants into their home.
Let yourself rest. Let yourself lean into whatever and wherever your life is — and know that a season is just a season, which gives us solace in knowing that things pass but also that there’s great strength in growing, even when it seems we’re not. So many plants are still working on roots, preparing for spring, having stored energy ready to give it back again many times more. Everywhere we gardeners walk, we’re dusted with resilience, just like a cardinal’s wings in a snowfall or the burdened branches of a young elm tree.
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More on Houzz
Read more guides about gardening with native plants
Work with a drought-tolerant-landscape pro near you
Shop for gardening tools
When you get down to the distilled parts of being alive, you find tiny metaphors in everything — they are like a single candle off in the distance through a midnight blizzard. These metaphors slice through darkness easily and awaken us to ourselves once again.
Hoarfrost on the seedpods of dwarf blue indigo (Baptisia australis var. minor) is a good example. These soft shells, puffed up like burned marshmallows over a campfire, hold within them seeds that need multiple years of warm and cold weather to germinate best. They are a precious cargo, protected from winter yet needing winter, holding large amounts of stored food and energy for the day they will become themselves fully. Over winter, the dead top growth breaks off and the entire plant rolls away like a tumbleweed, dropping its progeny along the way.