Bones, Berries and Bark - The Keys to the Winter Landscape

The Dandy Man Color Wheel® Rhododendron offers large blooms that age from red to pink and white and offers the landscape incredible structure and evergreen leaf texture.

Proven Winners is introducing Just Chill Red Tip™ camellia in 2024. It has glossy leather leaves sporting burgundy-colored new growth yielding dazzling fall pink blooms.

Proven Winners has become Loropetalum headquarters and while some offer deep burgundy evergreen foliage, Jazz Hands® Variegated offers leaves of burgundy and cream splashes.

A lot of people dread winter because the landscape can retreat from its beauty to one that looks more like Siberia. It doesn’t have to be that way if you can remember the three B’s, Bones, Berries, and Bark.

The bones are the evergreen shrubs that serve as the structural foundation of the garden. The winter landscape can look lush and alive once we incorporate evergreen shrubs in repetitive layers throughout the garden. Here is where you put into practice the theory, ‘making the landscape look good in January will allow all of the other months to fall into place like dominoes’.

Proven Winners^® has many choice evergreens for the Southern landscape.  These aren’t just evergreens but those that offer incredible texture as well as those that are gold, red, variegated and more. This allows you to create true landscape magic.

There are those like the Dandy Man Color Wheel^® rhododendron that has proven itself well suited to the South with large incredible flowers that change from red to pink and a pristine white.  Yet the structure or habit is so wonderful you would want it if it never bloomed.

1. Fluffy^®, a gold selection of western arborvitae shows its contrast grown with deep greenleaf hollies.
2. Sky Box^® Japanese Holly (Ilex crenata) offers the landscape an incredible Christmas tree-like habit reaching 5' tall and 3' wide.
3. Anna's Magic Ball^® arborvitae would make an incredible partnership with the Sky Box^® holly with unbeatable contrast.

Proven Winners is introducing Just Chill Red Tip^™ camellia in 2024. With its glossy leather-like foliage, this camellia will bloom in the fall with dazzling pink flowers. It will also offer a distinct look in the garden with a 5 to 8-foot height and a 6-foot spread with growth that is green with burgundy new growth. Partnered with the golden needled Fluffy^® western arborvitae or one of the Jazz Hands^® loropetalums will bring joy and interest to the winter landscape.

The winter landscape would not be complete without the addition of hollies. Hollies with their leaves constructed of thick waxy cuticles offer the best in winter cold-hardiness and drought resistance in summers like 2023. Many thinks of Proven Winners as the home of Supertunia^® but it’s also the home of Sky Box^® Japanese Holly. This 5-foot-tall holly with a 3-foot spread looks like a picturesque fairy tale Christmas tree in the landscape. You will want to repeat these throughout the landscape. Anna’s Magic Ball^®, a round, golden arborvitae would create a ‘can't take my eyes off you’ contrast throughout the year even more so in winter.

Berries bring the winter landscape to life in color and in songbird feeding activity. Proven Winners offers the very best in Winterberry hollies (Ilex verticillata) that are known to feed 48 species of birds. This one is Berry Heavy Red.

Proven Winners is also your headquarters for Viburnums. This incredibly beautiful variety is Brandywine and selection of Viburnum nudum or Possumhaw viburnum native to 30 states and Canada.

Proven Winners also offers the incredible Temple of Bloom tree which reaches 10 feet tall and wide. Fragrant white blooms bring in butterflies and hummingbirds in late summer giving way to showy red bracts.

Temple of Bloom also called Seven-Son-Flower shows superior texture in the winter with exfoliating tan bark.

But hollies are also known for berries, the second of our key ingredients. The Winterberry hollies, known botanically as Ilex verticillate, are the showstopper in the winter. Proven Winners has red berry selections like Berry Poppins^® and Berry Heavy Red^® and golden berry selections too like Berry Heavy^® Gold. Winterberry Holly is a champion too as 48 species of birds will eat the berries.

Proven Winners has become a one-stop shop for Viburnums and The Garden Guys selects Brandywine^™, a variety of the native Viburnum nudum as the most beautiful in the garden. Viburnum nudum is native to 30 states and parts of Canada. This viburnum, called Possumhaw viburnum by the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, attracts butterflies in bloom and all sorts of birds when berries are ripe.

So, we’ve covered B for bones (or evergreen foundation plants) and B for berries. Now consider the importance of the last B and that is for Bark.

In the South, we consider crape myrtles, birch, and lacebark elm as the champions for showy exfoliating bark. Proven Winners has introduced some competition with a tree that is still on the new list. The tree is Seven-Son-Flower, or Temple of Bloom^®, and is a must-have tree for zones 5-9.

Known botanically as Heptacodium miconioides this tree offers something for the landscape 12 months of the year. Clusters of fragrant white flowers bring in hummingbirds and butterflies in late summer and early fall and the drop to the ground reveals showy red bracts. Then with leaf and flower fall the exfoliating tan bark is revealed. It will reach 10 feet tall and as wide which is perfect for landscapes of any size.  

Indeed, the winter landscape doesn’t have to look like the frozen tundra; it can be a real showplace if you have the three B’s. Bones of evergreen foundation plants, in repetition and layers and variety of texture, Berries on evergreen and deciduous shrubs, and showy Bark create contrast. As we head into fall this is the best time to plant. Follow me on Facebook @NormanWinterTheGardenGuy for more photos and garden inspirat