When it's winter, you can still have an interesting garden

The paperbark maple's layers of bark peel and curl around the trunk of the tree like copper colored wood shavings.

The hostas have turned to mush, the balloon flowers look like they've been put through a blender, and the daylilies are as limp as oysters, unless you have invested in plants with year round interest, your garden is about as attractive as a traffic island right now.

Gardeners must cling to the three "b's", bark, berries and birds to put life in the stark winter landscape.

Yvvonne Cunington is a garden writer who admits she has a "soft spot for February." The author of the soon to be published Clueless in the Garden: A Guide for the Horticulturally Hopeless says she is one of the few gardeners who loves winter.

Cunnington is establishing lush, layered gardens in the countryside near Hamilton.

"I don't cut my perennial garden back until spring and am rewarded with many small seed eating birds that come to feed there all winter long. I also love trees and shrubs that keep their berries long into the winter. The native highbush cranberry Virburnum trilobum is good for that, as are the crabapples, 'Sugar Tyme', which has little dangly red fruits and 'White Angel' with larger fruits. Both of these crabs last well into the winter, at least until flocks of birds come and strip them all off one late January or February afternoon. (Both of these crabs are also quite disease resistant.)"

She also paints a lovely picture of what ornamental grasses do for the winter landscape. "Outside my home office window, I have a wonderful Miscanthus sinensis 'Grosse Fontine' with gorgeous flower plumes. It's about six feet tall and I enjoy it all winter because it's constantly moving with the wind."

While Cunnington gardens on the large scale, garden designer Wayne Renaud packs visual interest and movement in a small urban garden in Port Credit.

"Keep some water open in the winter, you'd be amazed at how many birds it attracts", says Renaud. "You can use a small heater to keep bird baths open and run the pump to keep some open water in the pond." Renaud and partner Gord Webber, of Renaud-Webber Home and Garden Design Consultants just returned from Vancouver, where they were amazed to find people using outdoor heaters to entice hummingbirds to stay and use feeders.

In his own garden and his clients, he plants intensively, using evergreens for winter texture and colour. The wintercreeper euonymus is a favorite. "The berries are wonderful and break up the monotony of winter." Renaud uses it as a ground cover, but it will also climb walls and arbors. It is hardy to Zone 5 and quite tolerant of sun or shade. The purpleleaf wintercreeper Euonymus fortunei var. coloratus is usually easy to find at garden centres and has cheery orange fruit dangling from walnut coloured capsules. The wintercreeper euonymus is a handsome choice for the frigid months, with one warning; it is susceptible to scale infestation. This crawling insect can denude a plant over time, so one must watch for outbreaks and take evasive action. A dedicated program of horticultural oil applications is one recommended way to control scale.

At the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, I noticed how attractive the purpleleaf wintercreeper was looking after a recent storm. The evergreen leaves looked like they'd had a touch of bronzer, and the fruit was prolific. There is enough heft to the plant to capture mounds of snow in miniature cloud formations. The purpleleaf type is a vigorous grower and a good choice for dry slopes.

After admiring the wintercreeper, I made a pilgrimage to view an outstanding tree for the winter landscape, the paperbark maple Acer griseum. It was one of the rare days when the sun was shinning and the bark of this lovely tree was glowing in a gorgeous way. Thin layers of bark peel and curl around the trunk of the tree like copper colored wood shavings. If it is backlit by the sun and set off by fresh snow, it is a picture without rival. It is a perfect tree for small gardens, with a mature height of only 20 to 30 feet. It is hardy to Zone 5 and tolerant of a wide variety of soils from acid to alkaline, but they should be well draining. In summer the paperbark maple shows a delicate vase shape, in the autumn the three lobed leaves often turn a good, blushing red. In winter it will lure you away from your heated bunker to worship its beauty.

Glorious plants will benefit from a handsome setting, and that is where a strong design will come through according to Darren Schmahl, garden designer and co-owner of The Copper Leaf Garden Store in Jordan.

"If your garden has good bones it will really show in the winter. There are no pots of annuals to disguise things," says Schmahl. "I think part of the secret is to simplify your design, don't have too many curves or wiggly lines."

Straight lines can be very effective in small city gardens. "Think of the garden as a series of overlapping rectangles, imagine boxes or cubes for a three dimensional quality," says Schmahl. Within the boxes plant in drifts says the garden designer. Right now he likes the winter view of the little coreopsis 'Moonbeam' with a backdrop of the shrub caryopteris. "The seeds on 'Moonbeam' are very dark and very dense, they contrast nicely with the pale, buff coloured seeds of the caryopteris."

Caryopteris, for those who don't know it, is also a wonderful shrub for the late summer garden, with it's masses of strong blue flowers .

Now if you happen to have a new house and a new garden you can hide all sorts of warts and blemishes with some well-placed ornamental grasses. While you wait for trees and shrubs to soften the winter views, ornamental grasses will bulk up like they've been fed steroids. In the winter they will add the softest colour tones, like the fur of a golden retriever. Most any of the grasses known as maidenhair or miscanthus, grace the garden with subtle beauty. The seed heads curl like puffs of smoke against a backdrop of snow, and the blades bend in gentle arcs. Be generous with the grass plantings, and tuck some spring bulbs close by for instant gratification.

In the winter garden strive to slow down the wind, create shadows, and a sense of shelter. Remember to enhance the landscape with bark, berries and birds and get ready to enjoy the garden in all seasons.