Winter Gardens – Winter Garden Design Ideas and Tips

While Gardens tend to be most used and appreciated in the warmer months of the year, there are some simple design elements that you can use to make your garden more appealing and beautiful during winter.

As a rule I try to design my gardens to be all year round spaces. Australians love to use their garden and be outdoors as much as possible, so it makes sense to design your garden for year round use.
There are many factors involved when designing and building a garden, but the two main factors should be functionality and aesthetics. A garden should be designed to be used at all times of the year including winter. By creating spaces that revolve around the house and its uses, and using the sun’s winter and summer patterns to your advantage, this can be achieved.

A fully function winter garden should make maximum use of the winter sun. This can be done by simply placing the garden in full sun, or more carefully and creatively with the use of deciduous trees such as Japanese Maples or Magnolias. Deciduous trees will help to define a space and create an intimate garden by framing the area, while allowing maximum sun to permeate. Paving a winter garden space also adds a reflective element to the garden, adding much needed solar warmth to the space. By creating a more enclosed space with the use of fencing or a green wall along the back of a garden, one can effectively eliminating any wind and ‘catch’ the sun, this creates a micro climate where the sun is ‘trapped’ in the space.

Despite popular opinion there are actually a plethora of plants, shrubs and trees that will flower during winter. Some examples of flowering trees include Magnolias, ornamental cherries and apples. The most impressive winter flowering shrubs are of course the Camellias. Add to this list shrubs such as Daphne, Helleborus, Osmanthus (which incidentally are all scented) and the multitude of flowering bulbs and there you have a bright colourful winter garden.

Winter colour, and indeed year round colour, can also be achieve with the use of coloured foliage plants. For a more tropical style garden Cordylines, Ctenanthe, Gingers and Bromeliads can be used to get a colourful effect.

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