Art Design 4 Garden

Im a bit behind (we had a medium hard frost overnight), but Im ready to put plastic over bamboo and river cane supports to create low hoop tunnels. 

Arundinaria gigantea is one of our native bamboos in the SE US, and its young canes make lovely supports, as theyre flexible and an attractive purple green color.

river cane hoops ready for protection

But young canes of Asian bamboo (overly robust where planted around here), work well too. 

When green, theyre flexible, and have the advantage over PVC pipe of being sustainable (that is, biodegradable) and attractive.

The ravine below our small house in the mountains was covered with snow in the Christmas storm.  The most recent snow covered the ravine, too, but is now melting with warmer temperatures. 

Snow-covered ravine

My gardening companion just sent me this photo (finally) downloaded from his camera, a small digital camera that were now taking traveling, instead of my Nikon D100, an older digital workhorse.

In a mild winter climate, theres not much excuse for retreating indoors at the first sign of gloom. 

OK, Im as susceptible as the next normal Southern U.S. gardener to whine when we have long dark rainy days for more than two days in a row.  Hmm, are we wimpy, or what?

But what our long seasons mean is that we can grow winter vegetables (some with a bit of protection) quite well, and that we can have winter interest in our gardens from berries, bark, seed heads, dried foliage, etc. that continue our gardening season through the winter and beyond.

I was reminded of this today by an excellent article by Piet Oudolf in Fine Gardenings regular e-mail. 

In the long winter days in the Netherlands, he relies on many of our North American natives for winter interest in perennial borders.  He includes plants whose fruits, seedheads, or berries are interesting to look at throughout winter.  Totally wonderful.