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National Gardening Association Berried in the Snow

by Karen Jescavage-Bernard

For those of us in the cold or temperate parts of the country, gardening in winter becomes a kind of spectator sport. When it's too cold to dig, we abandon our accustomed roles as active participants and contemplate the display we've created for the dormant season. Evergreens plants are crucial to this effort; so are shrubs and trees with interesting branch patterns and colorful bark. But brightest of all are the red, yellow and blue berries that can sparkle through the cold core of winter.

If we choose our plants carefully, there's another dimension berried trees and shrubs can bring to our winter gardens: fluttering wings, flashes of color and songs that say food has been found. Winter birds feeding on the bright berries can be as uplifting to see as roses or lilies unfurling in midsummer.

The colorful fruits that bejewel our shrubs and small trees into the heart of winter have one thing in common. They remain hard or bitter until either time, repeated freeze-thaw cycles or perhaps a bit of fermentation make them palatable. That's a good thing, because it insures that the fall migrants don't eat everything as they pass through. Many of the best berries for winter gardens are starvation rations that the birds won't touch until hard times arrive late in the season.

If you're like me, your time in the garden in winter is spent walking to and from the car, to the mailbox, or looking longingly out the window. It makes sense to plant your winter garden where you can see it: near the drive or walkways, flanking the entrances to the house or garage, or in full view of the windows of your most-lived-in rooms.

For the sake of the birds, berried shrubs should be planted densely in groups or islands. This provides cover from hawks and owls. It also means that a free-form natural look is best. Sheared shrubs generally don't produce many berries. For a formal look near buildings, train vines like Virginia creeper on trellises or espalier plants such as euonymus, holly, viburnum or pyracantha to a wall.

Concentrate on finding multiseason performers that pull their weight in the landscape all year round. Besides winter berries, the ideal plant should have a pleasing shape once it leafs out, attractive flowers and foliage and good autumn color. This sounds like a lot to ask, but if you look carefully there are many excellent plants available. Here's a closer look at 10 choices that that are tops for year-round good looks and wide adaptability.

American Mountain Ash (Sorbus americana)

This 10- to 30-foot-tall tree is a good choice for even small yards. Showy white flowers in spring give way to large clusters of spectacular orange-red berries that are the birds' very last choice in winter. A bonus is the brilliant salmon-orange fall color of the leaves. Hardy into northern Quebec (zone 2), Mountain Ash prefers sunshine and moist, acid soil, but grows well in thin soil or light shade. It can be found as far south as Georgia in the mountains. The related Korean mountain ash (S. alnifolia) is larger, and more resistant to trunk borers, which sometimes devastate nearly all members of the Sorbus group.

Common Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis)

"Common" because it is routinely planted as a street tree or windbreak in cold, dry areas of the country, hackberry has brick-red to dark purple berries that ripen in early autumn. It is one of the rare medium-sized trees that thrives in the hot, dry, windy, alkaline conditions of the prairies and plains, yet will grow in zones 2 to 9. Twenty-four species of birds relish the fruits of this 30- to 50-foot tree. In full sun, the hackberry grows straight and self-prunes its lower branches. Western hackberry is a better choice in a dry alpine climate. In the South, where witches'-broom disfigures common hackberry, plant the sugar hackberry (C. laevigata).

Flowering Crab Apple (Malus sp.)

There are more than a dozen wild species of crab apple native to Asia, Europe and North America, and from these many excellent hybrids have been made. Depending on both the individual cultivar and the rootstock, you can have a tree small enough for a rooftop container or grow a 40- to 50-foot specimen to grace the lawn or edge of the woods.

Since most people value "crabs" for their billowing spring display, you need to be sure the variety you select is noted for persistent fruit, which can be purple-red or yellow and every shade in between. Also be sure it is resistant to apple scab and cedar apple rust, diseases that can defoliate the trees in a bad year. A few good cultivars are Adams, Autumn Glory, Callaway, Coral Cascade, Indian Magic, Harvest Gold, Liset, Molten Lava, Prairie Fire, Ralph Shay, Red Snow, Snowdrift, White Angel and White Cascade.

Holly (Ilex sp.)

With few exceptions, holly is a plant for moist climates and acid soils. In temperate areas of the Southeast and Pacific Northwest, hollies attain tree size. Elsewhere, hollies are shrubs that make outstanding specimen and hedge plantings wherever they can be grown. Their berries soften slowly; the birds leave them until late winter.

Year-round assets of the evergreen hollies include dense, glossy green (or dark blue) leaves and colorful berries. Besides the classic red Christmas holly, a yellow-berried cultivar is available whose fruit attracts less attention from hungry birds. The deciduous hollies, with their fountains and showers of scarlet berries, are probably the most spectacular shrubs in the winter garden.

Only female hollies produce berries, so one male shrub must be somewhere nearby. Many cultivars tolerate shade, damp and even smog and most are pest-free. Holly does not tolerate drought, high wind, extreme cold (hardy to zone 6) or alkaline soil, however, so this is not a plant for gardens in the far north, dry Midwest or the lower Pacific coast.

Viburnum (Viburnum sp.)

Viburnums tolerate a wider range of pH and temperatures than many ornamental plants, which makes them an obvious choice for gardens with alkaline soil. There are 120 species, ranging in size from two feet to 30 feet, and many cultivars of them and hybrids available. A few have evergreen leaves, many have delightful fragrance to go with their large, graceful flower clusters, and most color handsomely in fall. The fruit ranges from blue-black to red and is so beloved by wildlife that only a handful of viburnums make a good show of berries into midwinter.

The best of all is V. trilobum, the American cranberry bush, which holds its red fruit through January. The European cranberry bush (V. opulus) is similar, but the fruits are usually gone by early winter. The leatherleaf viburnum (V. rhytidophyllum) is evergreen, and the fruit is handsome as it turns to green and finally black. The berries are usually gone by January 1. The black fruit of the nannyberry (V. lentago) and the linden viburnum (V. dilatatum) are consumed in early winter. Iroquois is an especially good cultivar of V. dilatatum. Note that all viburnums set much more fruit with a second or third closely related cultivar nearby; two plants of the same variety or different species won't do.

Coralberry and Common Snowberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus and S. albus)

Considering how versatile these small native shrubs are in zones 3 to 7, their scarcity in our gardens is a mystery. Both have attractive spring blossoms and unusual autumn fruits. Coralberry flowers also attract hummingbirds to the garden. Both shrubs flourish under difficult growing conditions. In sun or shade, damp soil or dry, they form dense thickets and are recommended for planting on steep banks and eroded stream banks. Snowberry, with its ½-inch white fruits, will grow in clay or limestone soils and will tolerate extreme cold. The brighter berries of coralberry, purplish red and about ¼ inch in diameter, have the obvious edge in a snowy landscape.

Cotoneasters (Cotoneaster sp.)

Widely adaptable to different climatic regions and available in a variety of forms and sizes, cotoneaster's firey fruits are especially striking in the winter garden when the arching branches creep over the snowy ground or cascade down a high bank. Two-foot-tall rockspray cotoneaster (C. horizontalis) spreads into a 15'-foot patch. Hardy only to zone 6, it grows in well-drained soils in full or partial sun. So does the shorter (one foot tall) and smaller bearberry cotoneaster (C. dammeri). Eight foot wide creeping cotoneaster (C. adpressa) also tolerates partial sun, but requires moist soil and is hardy to zone 5. Other European and Japanese cotoneasters make colorful medium-height hedges, specimen shrubs or ground covers in the dry gardens of the prairies and plains.

Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia).

Tolerant of heat, cold and drought, this native vine is hardy from Quebec to Florida and west to Mexico, zones 3 to 9. It scrambles over walls, trellises and trees to produce an annual autumn curtain of flaming foliage. Dark blue berries appear in time to make a beautiful contrast with the leaves and last well into the winter. At least 35 bird species feed on the fruit.

Wintercreeper (Euonymus fortunei)

Often scorned as "the lazy man's lawn," wintercreeper reaches its full landscaping potential when it is grown vertically, rather than as a ground cover. This lifts the long-lasting orange capsules up to eye level, where their contrast against the dark green winter foliage can be enjoyed by the gardener as well as by the birds. Hardy as far north as zone 5, wintercreeper rapidly forms a thick screen that flourishes in sun or high shade and in either moist or average soil. Good air circulation, adequate watering and occasional pruning are its only needs.

All 10 of these plants give great value to gardeners. What's in it for the birds? Even a small property has room for several of these small trees and large shrubs, since many of them are suitable for naturalistic hedgerows, privacy screens or windbreaks for the garden. And as the plants mature, each will produce considerable poundage of energy-rich fruit. It's the sort of thing that can mean survival for overwintering birds when the deepest cold arrives.

Least Wanted List

Some extremely showy plants are also extremely invasive and should be avoided like the plague. One of their strategies is to produce plenty of berries in a form irresistible to birds, who then obligingly spread the multitudinous progeny through surrounding woods, meadows and roadways. Here are some real charmers that, unfortunately, have gotten out of hand.

Oriental Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus)

This strangler lights up dreary winter days with bushels of brilliant orange berries, all of which will be "planted" by the obliging birds. The unlucky gardener then faces a time-consuming fight to the death with the seedlings, tendrils and enormous roots of this monster. The sparse-fruiting American Bittersweet (C. scandens) has none of these bad habits.

Greenbrier (Smilax rotundifolia)

Twenty species of birds feed on the blue berries of this interesting vine. Less interesting is the impenetrable jungle of barbed tendrils that develop. Don't let it near your garden.

Pasture Rose (Rosa multiflora)

Used for stock hedges before barbed wire was invented, this highly attractive shrub now forms dense thickets throughout zones 5 to 7. The heavy crop of small red berries is a prime winter food for more than 25 species of birds, which will spread it to any corner that might still be free of it. Copyright NGA

Reprinted with permission HouseNet, Inc.

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