DEL.ICIO.USMARTHA TATE
A splendid winter garden comes to Madison
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Flossie Dodge laughs when she tells the story of her new winter interest garden at her farm outside Madison, Georgia.
“I have a milestone birthday this year, and my husband David asked me what I wanted for a present,” explains Dodge. “For a long time, I thought I would like to have an antique silver service, but then I said, ‘No. I don’t have many fancy occasions to serve coffee or tea out here.’ “
MARTHA TATE/Special
Ilex ‘Winter Red’ (deciduous holly) will be among the plants gardener Flossie Dodge is going to plant in her winter garden.
MARTHA TATE/Special
Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’ is a good candidate for a winter garden.
MARTHA TATE/Special
Camellia japonica, ‘Berenice Boddy,’ is excellent as a dark evergreen backdrop for deciduous flowering shrubs or early bulbs.
Japanese Camellia 'Berenice Boddy'
Botanical name: Camellia japonica
About the plant: A midseason (January and February) bloomer with lovely, light pink petals and yellow stamens. Semi-double flowers and a vigorous, upright growth. Hybridized in the United States, 1946.
Use in the garden: Excellent as a dark evergreen backdrop for deciduous flowering shrubs or early bulbs. Pretty cut flowers for floating in a bowl.
Planting and care: Plant in semi-shade in rich, moist well-drained soil. Provide protection from harsh winter winds.
Source: Ashe-Simpson Garden Center, 4961 Peachtree Industrial Blvd., Chamblee 30341; 770-458-3224
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Instead, Dodge, who is a former chairman of the Southeastern Flower Show and a longtime volunteer in horticultural circles, asked for “a real winter garden with berries and fruits and drupes and anything that looks good in the cold months.” She admits she was motivated to wish for such a garden by circumstances at her Episcopal church in Madison.
“I’m on the Flower Guild at Church of the Advent, and every fourth Sunday is my time to do the arrangement for the altar,” she says. “Unfortunately I have to follow Rick Crown [well-known garden designer and plantsman], who does the flowers on the third Sunday. It’s frowned upon if you don’t use things from your yard or the roadside, and all winter, Rick would come in with these arrangements that were fabulous. There would be wonderful blooming and berrying plants. Some of them you’d never seen before. It was a hard act to follow.”
The Dodges asked Rick Crown and his partner and fellow garden designer Richard Simpson to come up with a plan to complement the Dodges’ existing summer perennial beds. The men, whose own much-photographed garden in Madison contains many rare and unusual plants, drew up a series of three gardens that will ultimately contain dozens of trees and shrubs and hundreds of bulbs.
“The idea is to give Flossie either flowers, berries or interesting branches from October through March,” explains Crown. “Richard and I have kept a calendar since the 1980s, so we know what looks good when during the winter.”
The plan lists 89 plants, including bulbs in multiples of 100 to 150 and both deciduous and evergreen shrubs and trees. The new landscape, which can be viewed from the rooms the Dodges use in winter, can also be appreciated from their cars when they drive to and from the house.
Says Crown, “We’ve placed the plants to bloom or fruit in succession, like a series of torches that are set to light up all winter long.”
Following are some of the plants Crown and Simpson picked out for the Dodges. If she plants everything on the list, she’ll have no excuses come the fourth Sunday of every month.
• In the north bed: Winterhazel (light yellow corylopsis); strawberry tree (arbutus; when Rick Crown showed up at church with the fruiting branches of this small tree/large shrub, Dodge knew the silver service was out); ‘February Gold’ daffodil (lovely yellow reflexed petals); golden Thunberg spirea ‘Ogon’ (very early white blooming shrub with great summer foliage); variegated Burfordi holly; ‘Rijnveld’s Early Sensation’ daffodil (a big yellow flower as early as December and January); the exquisite tri-colored ‘Toyo-Nishiki’ flowering quince; ‘Yuletide’ sasanqua (red flowers with yellow center; blooms fall to winter)
• In the south bed: ‘Gold Leaf’ forsythia (yellow leaves and golden stems); Parney cotoneaster (showy clusters of red berries; a way underused plant); the weeping form of flowering apricot, ‘W. B. Clarke’; leucojum (snowflakes; a bulb that naturalizes easily); yellow fragrant wintersweet.
• In the shade bed: ‘Berenice Boddy’ camellia; variegated elaeagnus; ‘Leonard Messel’ deciduous magnolia; white berried nandina; ‘Lady Clare’ camellia; ‘Wheeler’s Variety’ butcher’s broom; Edgeworthia chrysantha ‘Winter Gold’; ‘Ice Follies’ daffodil (large lemon yellow that fades to white; very showy and reliable); ‘Winter Red’ deciduous holly.
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