Colorful shrubs brighten winter landscape

How Does Your Garden Grow? By Sharon Daniels

After most trees dropped leaves this fall, I could look past bare trunks and limbs at dots of bright color which lifted my spirits.

My long forsythia hedge retained nearly all its leaves whose strong yellow color caused it to look almost like branches were clad in yellow springtime flowers. The color and most leaves remained until late hours of the final day of November when the season’s first snow fell. Other local forsythia shrubs and hedges also still held their yellow leaves that day.

Clumps of Hakonechloa (Japanese Forest Grass) in my shade garden turned yellow in fall and remained yellow and strong long after hostas went mushy with cold. This ornamental grass, whose wide blades don’t grow upright but cascade downward, held its yellow until snow covered the clumps Nov. 30.

The brightest color this fall has been Burning Bush shrubs (Euonymus) and even snow barely affected some nearby. It can be invasive but is planted, or tolerated when it simply appears in a landscape, because of its interesting winged stems and brilliant fall red. A neighbor has allowed a hedge to form and that is really dramatic.

Such color lifts my spirits anytime, especially this year, but it doesn’t always last this long into fall. Several landscape shrubs, though, display yellows or reds in winter months.

The onset of cool weather stimulates the stems of shrub dogwood to show reds, oranges, bright yellows and burgundies. Winter is when these dogwoods star, when they are the major color players. Some also offer a secondary asset: variegated or colorful foliage in summer and fall.

Shrub dogwoods which top the list are bloodtwigs whose stems are red and yellow, and a yellow-stemmed redosier which can reach up to six feet tall and wide.

Their youngest stems display the most vivid hues, so for the best color, they should be rejuvenated in their dormant season. Pruning one-third of the oldest stems to the ground will force a flush of new stems next year. That is a dramatic sight against a snowy background.

Some species also benefit from being cut to the ground every few years for a flush of thicker, shorter stems the following spring.

Don’t discard the cut stems. Put them in a vase for a long-lasting, colorful indoor display, or for bright color in a porch pot.

Another colorful option is shrubby willow (Salix) whose young twigs turn bright red or red-orange in cool temperatures.

Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick, a filbert (Corylus), is an unusual shrub. Its foliage is contorted, then when leaves drop, fantastically twisted branches are on display. A few cuttings can add unusual interest in large flower arrangements. Prune any suckers which arise below the plant’s graft as they will not be contorted.

Sharon Daniels is a Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardener volunteer.