Is your yard earning its keep?

When I was in design school in Colorado, the opening project of one winter semester was to visit the Denver Botanic Gardens and photograph the gardens.  Naturally, we the students, whined and complained about being assigned a picture taking exercise during the time of year when it was not only cold, but all the plants were buried under a blanket of snow.

In response, my teacher, Wendy Booth, shared two pieces of indispensible wisdom.  First, “good weather” is anytime there isn’t something actively coming out of the sky.  (Now that I live in Oregon, my definition of “good weather” has had to be even further broadened.)  And second, winter is the best time to look at a landscape with a designer’s eye.  Pull your head out of your aster and start seeing the garden for more than the plants!

Now is when the structure of your space is laid bare and you can no longer cover up inadequacies with flowery frosting.  Because a good landscape should look great even in the winter, be brave, get out there and really see what’s happening.  Have your paths completely lost their shape without plants to define their boundaries?  Are they adequate?  Practical?  Comfortable?

What about vertical elements?  Does your house look like a lonely behemoth rising out of a flat piece of dirt?  You may realize you need some supporting characters to visually frame the house, connect it to its surroundings, and create a less abrupt image than “box on prairie.”

Step back and put on your macro lens.  Is there a sense of adequate proportion, scale, harmony that ties all of the individual elements together to create a complete whole?  Is it bland?  Are you lost and lacking an adequate focal point now that the Knock Out Rose is knocked out?

Look for areas where you can incorporate more advanced design elements like rhythm, repetition, layering, and contrast.  Add a piece of garden sculpture.  Examine the presence of winter interest plants (or lack thereof).  Are they creating as beautiful and balanced a picture as your warm weather performers do?

Consider your slumbering yard as a clean slate and use this opportunity to dream up new possibilities.  Not only will you gain a valuable new perspective on the cycles and structures of your garden, but you’ll emerge in spring with a plan to focus any improvements in the areas where they’ll make the most impact.

You don’t get to stop paying your mortgage or rent at the first sign of frost so why should your yard get to take the winter off?

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