When the temperature plunges, your porch will turn into a seamless cover of white. Before the snow turns monochrome, consider winter landscaping. With strategic plant selection, you can create colorful focal points that take your yard’s palette beyond white, gray and brown. Here’s ten ways to enliven the porch in the quiet season.
Remove Lawn Debris
When early snowfall blankets fall leaves, it forms a dense cover that prevents sunlight from reaching the ground. This not only suffocates the budding plants beneath, but triggers the formation of mold. When you remove dead leaves and natural lawn debris, you remove their ability to stunt plant growth. To prevent the harsh weather conditions from causing havoc, consider tarping your yard with heavy-duty custom tarps.
Mulching is Essential
After weatherproofing your yard with the protection of custom tarps, mulch is your next line of defense from frigid temperatures. Mulching prevents the repeated freezing and thawing of soil, ensuring a healthy lawn through the winter. Some excellent mulches include straw, finely chopped leaves or shredded bark. Apply three to four inches of mulch after the ground begins to freeze, and avoid laying it too close to trunks or stems.
Focus on Colorful Twigs
As trees shed their leaves during the winter, their branches become their focal point. To add flourish to your winter landscape, plant deciduous trees and shrubs with colorful stems and twigs. Making use of these adds a pop of hue against the white backdrop. Dogwood shrubs, birch trees and Arctic fire look heavenly with their bright yellow, orange or crimson stems. To add more texture and encourage growth, make sure to prune the stems regularly.
Upgrade with your Hardscapes
In addition to greenery, hardscapes can upgrade your winter landscape in no time. A trellis, garden benches, pergola or garden sculptures add texture and striking aesthetics to the otherwise plain yard. Hardscapes also provide functional value. Benches add a resting spot for leisure activities, while a well lit pergola with fairy lights adds a warm cozy ambiance. Using custom covers will help keep that bench clear, dry, and ready to be used at a moment’s notice.
Winterberries for Winter Landscape
Berry plants are a useful tool for upscaling your winter landscape. The green foliage studded with berries in hues ranging from gold, red, and crimson to purple and blue provides color in an otherwise colorless yard. Hollies, winterberries, and cranberries all make for great additions against a snowy backdrop.
Plant Flowering Shrubs
Flowering shrubs aren’t just for Spring! There are several varieties of flowering plants that bloom when the temperature drops. Daphnes scent the air with white, pink or lavender blooms in mid-winter. Winter jasmine bears fragrant yellow flowers in mid-winter. Witch hazel ‘Jelena’ with their finger-like flowers adds a refreshing touch to your garden palette with their coppery-orange tinge.
Go for Potted Plants
Add character to your winter landscape by planting in distinctive window planters, hanging baskets and other winter-hardy containers. With pots, you can style the front door or line the driveway with evergreen boughs of different textures and interesting twigs. The dwarf varieties of hollies with striking red berries, Alberta spruce, broadleaf evergreen shrubs, and Camellia flowers are surefire hits when grown in attractive pots.
Leafy Plants
Evergreens are undoubtedly the kings of the winter landscape, but ornamental leafy plants such as cabbages and kales are reliable sources for winter pop. Annuals that are available in rosette forms can act like huge flowers with shades of pink, cream, green and red.
Light up with Solar Lights
From walls to lamp posts and driveaways, lighting up your winter porch with solar lights gives a warm glow to your landscape. These energy saving lights come in a range of different shapes and sizes. By strategically placing the lights, you can draw maximum power from sunlight during the short winter days.
Invest in Custom Covers for Outdoor Furniture
Harsh weather conditions wreak havoc on outdoor furniture and equipment when they’re left unprotected. No matter how durable you think your furniture is, leaving it uncovered is a recipe for winter disaster. Investing in heavy-duty custom covers as a solution is essential to protect and store outdoor furniture for increased longevity.
Along with overall weather protection, we have an array of prints, motifs and fabrics for our range of table covers and sofa covers. A decorative cover adds a distinct character to an otherwise drab porch. And when the season’s done, you can store these covers in storage bags until Spring.
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