Landscape Plants for NC: Winter

Paperbush (Edgeworthia chysantha)
brightens our winter gardens

By Jan Little
Director of Education & Public Programs

One of the great pleasures of gardening in North Carolina is the presence of flowers year-round. Each season has its magic, and the winter—with its spare quality, stripped of leafy ruffles and decorations—is no exception.

The calendar does not rule gardens in North Carolina with an iron fist. Instead, various plants can thrive and blossom all year, thanks to the mild climate. Bobby Mottern, director of horticulture at Sarah P. Duke Gardens, has a list of plants you might consider for your winter garden.

In December, the garden can be decked out for winter holidays with iridescent red berries on the evergreen yaupon hollies (Ilex vomitoria) and the deciduous hollies (Ilex verticillata selections). These are both native plants, and there are a number of forms or hybrids to choose among for ultimate size or berry color. As with most hollies, planting both a male and female form is guaranteed to produce a berry display.

Also, sasanqua camellias (Camellia sasanqua or C. sasanqua x oleifera) begin to flower in late autumn and extend through January, if not into February. The sasanquas have been selected and hybridized with Camellia oleifera to create a wide range in sizes and flower colors. Their dark, glossy green foliage serves as a beautiful backdrop through most of the year and some selections add mildly spice-scented flowers! Considerable work has been done at the National Arboretum in selecting and hybridizing winter-hardy camellias; look for the plant’s “Winter’s” series (Winter’s Charm, Winter’s Hope, etc.) to find some of these selections.

A beautiful plant in all seasons, hybrid witchhazels (Hamamelis x intermedia) are a special treat throughout the winter season. Again, there are many choices here for size, color and fragrance. In general, the witchhazels bloom in late January and February with golden yellow, orange or red flowers, many with fragrance. Look for the hybrids Arnold Promise (introduced by the Arnold Arboretum) for both fragrance and bright yellow flowers, or Jelena, also known as Copper Beauty, with bright apricot to copper colored flowers. Additionally, Primavera is known for the early floral fragrance from abundant yellow blossoms.

Paperbush (Edgeworthia chysantha) also brightens our winter gardens. The winter flower buds of this plant form beautiful, downy chandeliers of buds (similar to its cousin, the Daphne), held in downward-facing clusters. Beginning in February, occasionally in late January, this flower chandelier begins to face up and out toward the sun, opening to a wonderfully fragrant egg-yolk yellow flower. This plant also has a pretty habit and ornamental form that is attractive throughout the year.

A more well-known camellia, the Japanese camellia (Camellia japonica) adds its large, showy flowers to the mix in late January. With large, 3- to 5-inch diameter flowers of any number of white, pink, rose, and red flower choices, this camellia defies winter temperatures.

And late winter is greeted by the superb scent of fragrant wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox). This plant has only one season of interest each year – the fragrant flowers in February – but that season is so wonderful it is easy to overlook its shortcomings at other times of the year. Although a plain Jane the rest of the year, it can be a useful backdrop and worth every bit of garden square footage for that season of bloom.

All of these plants can be seen at Duke Gardens. If you would like to learn more about winter season plants, please join us for Bobby’s next class, “Landscape Plants for North Carolina Gardens: Winter,” beginning on Nov. 29 from 1 to 3:30 p.m. and running weekly for three weeks. The fee is $110; $90 for Gardens members or Duke faculty, staff or students.

For information about this and other classes, or to register, please call 919-668-1707.

Sarah P. Duke Gardens creates and nurtures an environment in the heart of Duke University for learning, inspiration and enjoyment through excellence in horticulture. The Gardens is at 420 Anderson St. Visit online at gardens.duke.edu, or call 684-3698.

Duke Gardens: Exploring Winter Botany

Article by Lauren Sims
Photos by Rick Fisher

For many, a walk through the woods to identify plants is an activity restricted to the spring and summer seasons. Plants, after all, are identified by their leaves—nature must be in bloom in order to learn about them. Right? Not so fast, says Ken Moore.

“Take a walk in the woods in the wintertime, and try and contrast it with a similar walk that you would make in the middle of the summer,” says Moore, the former assistant director of the N.C. Botanical Garden. “In the wintertime, you don’t have all those leaves on the trees. So you can really see the whole nature of the landscape. You can see the ups and downs, you see the beautiful architecture of the whole forest.”
A forest is lovely in the summer, Moore says. But despite the cool shade and the vibrant greens, “you can’t really see the forest because of the leaves. You’re so busy looking at the color of trees and flowers and the texture of ferns, you’re sort of unaware of the characteristics of individual plants.”

“With all the leaves gone, you’re forced to concentrate on other aspects of the plants,” he says. And, surprisingly, bare branches can actually be more clearly identifiable than foliage. According to Moore, leaves on the same plant may vary widely in their color, their size and even in their shape. In many cases, using them for identification purposes can be more confusing than helpful. More stable identifiers like bark and the configuration of buds at the ends of branches are often a surer bet, and they are showcased during the winter months.
Winter may appear to be a barren or uninteresting season for nature lovers, but do not be fooled. There is much to learn about your favorite plants this time of year. In fact, you may come to prize those winter nature walks even more than their summer counterparts.

“Most of us walk around in the winter saying, ‘I don’t know what any of these things are, I’ll have to wait until the leaves come out so I can tell you.’ My feeling is, ‘I can’t wait until the leaves all fall off, and then I can have the forest back!’ ”
To learn more about nature in winter, consider taking Moore’s “Winter Botany” 2-day class at Duke Gardens on Jan. 23 and 30 from 1 to 4 p.m. For information or to register, call 668-1707, e-mail the registrar or see page 12 of our full education brochure (PDF).
Sarah P. Duke Gardens creates and nurtures an environment in the heart of Duke University for learning, inspiration and enjoyment through excellence in horticulture. The Gardens is at 420 Anderson St.

Lauren Sims is a graduate student at Duke Divinity School and a work-study assistant at Duke Gardens. This article first appeared in The Herald-Sun on Jan. 15.