Stands of birch trees and groupings of red twig dogwoods or winterberries are wonderful. At one of my customers houses I planted, as part of a perennials garden, black eyed Susan and ornamental grasses. I left in them up in fall and they're adding a nice touch to the winter landscape.

Here is a link that might be useful: www.GardenListings.com

Thank you river 2007. I saw some red twig dogwoods on someone's photo earlier today. Very nice. Should they have an evergreen backdrop?

Teresa

Teresa,
I'm getting in late on this, but red-twig dogwoods are lovely against a backdrop of snow.

Thanks, River, for the winterberries idea!

If you've ever seen a stand of yellow twigged dogwoods - I think they steal the show from the red ones. You need to stay after all of them with pruning to get the brightest color from the new stems.

There are weeping trees - both deciduous and evergreen that are very pretty in the winter landscape, as are trees with nice bark like Acer griseum, birches, heptacopdium.

I was on a garden walk today and one place had bonsai'ed Japanese maples into large interesting shapes that would be incredible in the snow. They did the same with crabapples. Another place pruned crabapples as if they were river birch - 3 trunks coming from the base, another place had coppiced an elm tree which ended up with about 20 trunks coming from the base - that was beautiful.

There are so many cool dwarf and miniature conifers now - its just endless.

I like to use the broadleafed evergreens. Pieris is underused sometimes, but the leaves don't droop like rhodos do when it gets really cold.

I don't have Cornus controversa but I think that is just a beautiful tree in the snow with its wedding cake tiers.

I also don't have American Holly but if I had room I'd put one in - they are magnificent when grown to maturity.

Thank you Alyrics, for your ideas.

I saw another this week at a hotel on Staten Island (I live in St. Louis) and the first thought that occurred to me was what a fabulous winter view this would be especially as it was quite close to the restaurant window. The background was an evergreen hedge of columnar arborvitae about 6-7 feet tall. In front of the hedge were three different alternating plants. One was a small oakleaf hydrangeas (I am assuming they would provide great looking, tan dried flowerheads against the green backdrop), small holly shrubs and a type of shrub rose in bloom and already developing large hips (green at this stage). The rose did not look like a rugosa and the single blooms were carmine in color. I would guess those red hips in front of the arbortivae would look contrast well against the green in Winter.

The three plants were not in clusters but were alternated: hydrangea, holly, rose, hydrangea, etc. I'm trying to figure out where I could plantthis arrangement so I could view in person next Winter--well I guess it would be the following Winter considering this is already July!

Teresa