Welcome to our garden here in Zone 6A upstate New York, freshly blanketed in snow. This December garden tour is one of our favorites because winter strips everything back to the bones of the garden. What is left tells the real story.

No footprints yet (at least not from us), just a few deer tracks reminding us that winter gardening always comes with wildlife challenges. With the snow settled and the temperature hovering around 20 degrees, this is the perfect moment to slow down and appreciate evergreen structure, bark, form, and repetition.

If you are planning or refining a cold-climate garden, winter is where good design proves itself.

Why Evergreens Matter So Much in a Winter Garden

Winter is when evergreens truly earn their place. During the growing season, they often fade into the background behind flowers and foliage. Once snow arrives, they become the stars.

In our garden, evergreens serve several purposes:

• Providing year-round structure
• Softening the hard lines of the house
• Creating privacy where fences are not allowed
• Anchoring beds and pathways
• Repeating shapes and textures for visual continuity

At the front of the house, our columnar Hetz juniper softens the sharp corner of a very square home. Under the windows, Winter Gem boxwoods hide the foundation and add low, tidy structure that looks just as good in December as it does in July.

Even dormant hydrangeas look beautiful right now, but it is the evergreens that pull everything together.

The Green Wall: Privacy Without a Fence

Because our HOA does not allow fences beyond the front of the house, we rely on what we call our green wall. This layered planting of evergreens continues the visual line of our fence using plants instead of vinyl.

A mix of:

• Columnar junipers
• Arborvitae
• Cypress

creates privacy while still feeling natural and soft. In winter, you can really see how intentional repetition and spacing make this work.

Snow Shows Off Color and Texture

One of the surprises of winter gardening is how much color still exists.

A columnar Scotch pine glows blue as it catches snow on its needles. Birch trees shine with bright white bark, especially our Royal Frost birch, which also provides beautiful winter views from inside the house.

Some evergreens shift color in winter, too. Gold cone junipers lose their bright gold and turn green, while Anna’s Magic Ball stays a cheerful yellow all season. That pop of color in winter always makes us smile.

Designing With Structure, Not Just Flowers

As gardeners, we started learning this lesson the hard way. Plants do not always stay the size listed on the tag.

Our first Hetz juniper, planted in 2018, has already exceeded its expected size. Pruning keeps it in check, but winter reveals where past cuts were made and how the plant responded. That information is invaluable.

Winter is also when we:

• Evaluate spacing
• Notice overcrowding
• Identify branches rubbing or crossing
• Plan spring pruning

This is especially true for trees like Japanese maples, birches, and weeping forms. Without leaves, the structure is fully exposed.

Boxwoods: The Unsung Heroes of Our Garden

If there is one evergreen we use everywhere, it is boxwood.

Sprinter boxwoods, NewGen Freedom boxwoods, and larger specimens appear throughout the garden as:

• Anchors at path entrances
• Accents near trees
• Low hedges in garden rooms

In winter, they act like punctuation marks. They give your eye a place to rest before moving on. Repeating them on both sides of paths creates balance and rhythm that is easy to miss during peak growing season.

Evergreens as Problem Solvers

Evergreens also solve practical problems.

A Hinoki cypress helps hide our air conditioning unit. We planted it without staking or shaping, letting it grow naturally. Even after being transplanted in fall, it settled in beautifully with proper watering.

Elsewhere, evergreen walls are part of our long-term deer strategy. Temporary fencing works for now, but our plan is a dense evergreen barrier that will eventually make fencing unnecessary.

Winter Interest Beyond Evergreens

Evergreens are not the only stars.

Birches with peeling bark, contorted larch branches, red twig dogwoods, and even blueberry shrubs holding onto purple leaves all contribute to winter interest.

Japanese maples like Arctic Jade and Ice Dragon are especially striking right now. Their bark color shifts from red to green to gray, and their branching patterns feel sculptural against the snow.

Seeing all of this reminds us why we leave some plants standing through winter. Structure matters just as much as blooms.

Gardens Are Always Evolving

Some plants thrive faster than others, even when planted on the same day. Our Sting arborvitae are a perfect example. Same size, same planting time, completely different growth rates.

That is gardening.

We plan, we adjust, we prune, and we learn. Winter gives us the space to reflect without the pressure of immediate action.

Ending the Year in the Garden

A snow-covered garden at 20 degrees feels quiet, reflective, and hopeful all at once. Buds on the Jane Magnolia remind us that spring is coming, even when everything looks asleep.

This December garden tour reinforces why we focus so much on evergreen structure, repetition, and thoughtful placement. These are the elements that make a garden beautiful year-round, not just in peak season.

Thank you for joining us on this winter walk through our garden. We are Eric and Christopher, and we are Grow For Me Gardening.

Thanks for growing with us.

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