Creating a Four-Season Garden
Create a landscape filled with color, texture, and structure year round, with expert tips for planning, planting, and design.Creating a four-season garden transforms your outdoor space into a vibrant tapestry of color, texture, and life throughout the year. This involves selecting and arranging plants, incorporating structural elements to maintain visual interest, and choosing appropriate hardscaping materials. But beyond enhancing your garden’s aesthetic appeal, a well-designed four-season garden can also support local wildlife, ensuring that your garden remains a focal point of beauty and life, even in the depths of winter.
On this page: 5 Steps: Designing a Year-Round Garden | Season-by-Season Plant Selection
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The garden's year-round beauty comes from several factors. In addition to the blooming perennials in spring and summer, the decorative wrought-iron tuteur that supports the rose is much appreciated in the cold winter months. The combination of evergreen trees and shrubs, along with the winter berries from the cotoneaster, also provides food and shelter for hungry birds. The Anderson Garden. Photo by: Rebecca Sweet.
Creating a garden that is beautiful and engaging throughout the year involves more than just plant selection; you first need to 'set the stage' with thoughtful planning and design. Before sketching out your garden's layout, it's essential to understand the specifics of your location, such as your USDA zone, lighting, microclimates, soil type, and water availability. With this knowledge in hand, you can begin to think about your garden bed's layout, considering concepts such as layering strategies, the ratio of evergreens to perennials, and each plant's season of peak interest.
This home features oversized windows that were thoughtfully designed to serve as a 'frame' for the 'picture' of the tiered garden. Winter interest comes from the decorative stone walls, containers, and evergreen trees and shrubs, while the tiers are filled with an abundance of spring and summer blooming perennials. The Rountree Garden. Photo by: Rebecca Sweet.
Additionally, keep in mind the idea of "inside-out" design, which focuses on how the garden is viewed from indoors. This approach transforms your garden into a living artwork that can be enjoyed through your windows (using your window frames as the frame of your 'living art'). This enhances the beauty of your home while maximizing your garden's year-round potential.
5 STEPS: DESIGNING A YEAR-ROUND GARDEN (THE PLAN)
1. Structuring the Garden for Continuous Interest
What sets a great garden apart from a good one is its structure. Yet, many gardeners find this concept elusive, unsure how to recognize or create it in their own landscapes.
During the lush spring and summer seasons, when the garden bursts with color and life, its underlying framework can be challenging to identify. The spotlight naturally falls on the ‘showgirls’ of the garden-vibrant blooms competing for attention. But in winter, when the garden quiets down, its structure (or lack thereof) becomes much more apparent.
Take a step back and observe your garden during the colder months. Does it appear flat, lifeless, or dominated by shades of brown and white? Do you fight the urge to close the blinds until spring arrives? If so, your garden may be missing the strong framework it needs to shine year-round.
The winter garden at Woodside’s Filoli Estate is lovely, thanks to the structure and layout of the evergreen boxwood borders and nearby evergreen shrubs. The evergreen plants also serve as the ‘stage,’ helping to highlight the form of the deciduous trees. Photo by: Rebecca Sweet.
2. Establish a Framework of Evergreens
To create a well-structured garden throughout the seasons, include a variety of evergreens such as conifers, broadleaf evergreens, and, if possible, evergreen perennials. Evergreen trees and shrubs provide distinctive form and year-round interest, standing strong even in winter’s quiet landscape.
For example, consider using ‘Sky Pencil’ holly for a striking vertical element, its exclamation-point shape adding a jolt of excitement to a garden bed. Alternatively, embrace the gentle, mounding form of ‘Hudsonia’ balsam fir for a softer, more natural look. When many deciduous neighbors fade away for the season, these evergreens shine, keeping the garden visually engaging while maintaining your planting design throughout the year.
This community garden, with evergreen trees and shrubs of various sizes and shapes, provides plenty of winter structure and interest long after the summer-blooming perennials are dormant. 6BC Botanical Garden, East Village, NY. Photo by: Rebecca Sweet.
3. Combining Trees, Shrubs, and Perennials
The key to designing a garden that looks great year-round begins with a balanced mix of evergreen and deciduous trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals.
Begin by incorporating evergreen trees or shrubs as your garden's backbone for structure throughout the year. Next, pair these evergreens with various perennials that bloom in spring, summer, and fall to create a continuous display of color throughout the seasons. Whenever possible, choose perennials that also have interesting seed heads or striking silhouettes in winter to keep your garden visually appealing in the coldest months. Finally, layer in annuals to add a little extra seasonal sparkle.
This garden bed has it all, ensuring year-round beauty. The evergreen trees, shrubs, grasses, and artwork are the bones of the garden. Then, first to flower is the spring-blooming iris, followed by summer-blooming hydrangeas and agapanthus while the winter blooming kniphofia ‘Winter Cheer’ quietly waits its turn to shine. The Tanner Garden. Photo by: Rebecca Sweet.
4. Hardscaping and Non-Living Features
To establish the framework of a garden, it is important to spend time thinking about the hardscaping in your garden. Hardscaping refers to permanent structures like paths, boulders, benches, and arbors. These elements are often considered the "bones" of a garden, providing a framework for various planting beds.
Don't overlook the visual impact that non-living features can have, especially when looking out the window on days too hot or cold to enjoy the garden directly. For instance, a spinning kinetic sculpture can be captivating, adding movement and color regardless of the weather.
Artistic and detailed structures, such as a beautifully crafted arbor or pergola, can also enhance the garden's aesthetic. Why not create a spectacular focal-point fence by adding colorful hanging containers, artwork, or a living wall?
And don't forget the impact water can have throughout the year. A gentle running fountain instantly adds another subtle layer of sound to the garden, but even when it's not running, it can be a thing of beauty. As can be a simple birdbath, even when it's not a hub of activity for visiting birds (though the acrobats provided by bathing birds can't be beat!)
The materials you choose for paths and patios can contribute to year-round beauty, often changing colors when wet. Don't forget the pleasant sound of gravel crunching underfoot, adding another sensory element to your outdoor space.
Non-living elements keep this side yard engaging throughout the year, long after the jasmine blooms have faded, thanks to the colorful gate, the herringbone brick patio, and the soothing sounds of the fountain and wind chimes. Garden designed by Rebecca Sweet. Photo by: Rebecca Sweet.
5. Color Planning for Every Season
Creating a vibrant, ever-changing garden goes beyond seasonal flowers. Coordinating the color and the bloom time of different plants helps highlight and transition the seasons from one to another. For example, imagine the year-round visual impact of pairing spring's soft blues and purples with summer's radiant oranges and yellows and then welcoming autumn's deep reds and golds.
In addition to seasonal flowers, don't forget the textural qualities of bark and late-season or year-round foliage for many months of interest, even in the coldest winter months. The peeling bark of a paperbark maple (Acer griseum), for instance, not only adds a deep, rich cinnamon color to the winter landscape, but the thick curls of bark are a textural delight. In contrast, many Japanese maples have delicate, vibrant fall colors to finish the fall season with a bang.
Incorporate winter-blooming plants and berries to keep your garden buzzing with wildlife during the colder months. Winterberry holly's bright red berries provide cheerful pops of color against snowy landscapes while providing a meal for hungry birds. Meanwhile, pollinators appreciate the fragrant yellow, orange, or red blooms of witch hazels (Hamamelis virginiana) that appear in the heart of winter and the delicate, cold-hardy hellebore flowers that arrive as early as late winter.
Berries from the Hawthorn tree (Crataegus) sparkle against a backdrop of fall textures and colors provided by the surrounding shrubs and perennials. A drift of evergreen Lenten roses (Helleborus) and the background of tall evergreen trees ensure this garden remains inviting year-round. NYC’s Conservatory Garden. Photo by: Rebecca Sweet.
SEASON-BY-SEASON PLANT SELECTION
The following is an example of a seasonal planting guide designed to illustrate just how simple it can be to create year-round interest in the garden using a wide variety of plants and plant characteristics. To make your plant selection even easier, try to choose plants with unique qualities that can shine throughout several seasons.
A drift of early-blooming hellebores adds a welcome pop of color to the garden as it wakes from its winter nap. Washington Park Arboretum. Photo by: Rebecca Sweet.
Spring
- Early-blooming bulbs herald spring's arrival, like snowdrops (Galanthus), Narcissus, or Crocus.
- Ring in the season with perennials and annuals such as primroses, pansies, bleeding heart, and Lenten rose (Helleborus).
- Flowering trees and shrubs that begin blooming in early spring include native redbuds, quince, or pink heather (Erica canaliculata 'Rosea'), which starts blooming in early January and lasts through March.)
The long-blooming phlox ‘Blue Paradise’ adds a rich blue-purple color to the late summer garden, with pollinator-attracting flowers that last for several weeks at a time. Photo by Sabrina Tanner.
Summer
- Long-blooming annuals and perennials that shine despite the heat include coneflower, phlox, black-eyed Susan, and zinnia.
- Flowering shrubs include hydrangeas, re-blooming spireas ('Double-Play Red' blooms in spring and again in late summer), and sweetshrub (Calycanthus 'Aphrodite')
- Choose interesting foliage for long-lasting oomph in the garden, such as ornamental grasses, hostas, or Japanese maples.
The deep maroon shades of Astilbe 'Dark Side of the Moon' combined with late-blooming Agastache and Carex results in a show-stopping moment in the fall garden. Coastal Maine Botanical Garden. Photo by: Rebecca Sweet.
Fall
- Choose annuals and perennials that bloom in late summer and last through autumn, including asters, goldenrod, sedums, and Mexican sunflower (Tithonia).
- Trees and shrubs with impressive fall color include Japanese maples, ninebark (Physocarpus 'Diablo'), and sumac.
- Ornamental grasses that shine in summer also provide movement and texture on a windy fall afternoon.
The color and texture of the birch trees’ bark adds another layer of interest to the quiet winter garden. Photo by: Rebecca Sweet.
Winter
- Shrubs or trees with colorful bare stems or berries, such as dogwoods (Cornus stolonifera 'Flaviramea'), winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata), or Scarlet Willow (Salix alva 'Britzensis').
- Trees with interesting winter bark or a unique form, such as the paperbark maple (Acer griseum), the mighty cork oak (Quercus suber), or river birch trees (Betula nigra ‘Heritage').
- Choose perennials with strong seed heads that can last through the winter, including coneflowers (Echinacea), Sedum 'Autumn Joy', or rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus).
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