As you shop for winter-flowering heaths, don’t overlook the related heathers. Many varieties balance summer blooms with winter foliage in green, chartreuse, yellow, lilac gray, scarlet, and russet.
Plant bare-root berries, grapes, fruit trees, vines, vegetables, and ornamentals as soon as they come into nurseries. They are inexpensive and adapt quickly to unamended native soil.
Scout nurseries for winter-flowering camellias, Viburnum bodnantense, wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox), and a wide array of witch hazels.
Maintain
Prune ever-blooming, disease-resistant shrub roses like ‘Knockout’, the Flower Carpet series, and ‘Easy Elegance’ roses for shape.
Because a lopper is just a long-handled pruner, Corona has designed a convertible pruner and lopper with foldout handles. Cuts 1 1/4-inch diameter. $40, coronatoolsusa.com.
Brief winter mild spells usually give rise to galaxies of weed seedlings in empty beds. Demolish them fast with a scuffle hoe, and save yourself hours of hand weeding later.
Plan
Assess garden beds and borders now, while many plants are leafless. Note the shape and placement of trees, shrubs and ground covers, and areas that could use improvement. If beds are narrow and straight, plan to make them wide and curved. Check out tall plants to add height in back, medium ones for the middle, and low-growing edgers for the front.
Dig out a bark path 5 feet wide and 6 inches deep. Put packed sand on the bottom half and top it with ground bark to give yourself a dry, quiet, all-weather surface.
Space new plants according to their mature sizes—they’ll fill out faster than you might expect. In the meantime, fill the spaces between with annuals. Winter seed catalogs offer endless choices.
