GARDENER'S READING ROOM
The Art of Gardening
Trees and Shrubs

Structure Gardening

Spring is a riot of color. Summer is lush with foliage and flower. Fall is ablaze with oranges, reds, and yellows. Then what?

Winter is about structure and architecture — not trellises and hardscape, but branches, bark, and trunks. Let’s face it. We pick trees and shrubs for flowers or fall color. Nothing is more impressive than a Mount Fuji cherry in full spring glory. Japanese maples take our breath away in October. These are ephemeral. Let’s take a brief moment to look at what lasts and will be seen year-round.

There are several great small to medium trees that provide good structure and interest throughout the year. Oxydendron arboretum, or sourwood, is a beautiful fall-blooming tree with long, slender racemes of bell-shaped flowers held against brilliant scarlet fall leaves. Its narrow upright habit is accented in winter by persistent seed heads and handsome brown-black furrowed bark. The maple group contains several great possibilities. Acer griseum, paperbark maple, has deep-red fall color atop polished-looking cinnamon peels of bark. Acer saccharum, sugar maple, has the unmistakable leaf shape of the Canadian flag, eye-popping fall color, and the stately presence of a much larger maple in a medium-sized tree. The bark is smooth gray brown when young, aging to deep furrowed ridges that are almost shaggy in appearance. Acer japonicum (A. shirasawanum), full moon maple, is a handsome small tree growing 15-20 feet tall and usually at least as wide, often wider. Its pastel orange and yellow fall foliage closely resembles that of our vine maple, and its horizontal branching makes a strong visual statement in winter. The cultivar ‘Aconitifolium’ has deeply divided fernlike foliage.

Gingko biloba, maidenhair, is an ancient tree. Its tall, unmistakable habit of widely spaced branches is accented by equally distinctive fan-shaped foliage, lustrous yellow in fall. This elegant and majestic tree can live 1000 years.

Shrubs can also provide great architecture. Think of the beautiful zigzag stems of Fothergilla, adorned in fall with splashes of yellow, orange, and scarlet or its leafless branches hung in early spring with small, honey-scented white bottlebrush blooms. Viburnum plicatum v. tomentosum, doublefile viburnum, is a broad, elegantly layered plant, usually half again as wide as tall, with regimented ranks of white flowers in spring, bright red fruit turning blue-black in late summer, followed by deep reddish-purple fall color. Hydrangea quercifolia, oakleaf hydrangea, forms a robust 4-6’ tall and wide shrub, bearing white panicles of flowers which age to a red-bronze and persist into winter. The dark green leaves with their soft tomentose undersides turn a rich reddish purple in fall and persist on top of handsome exfoliating bark. Leaves will often stay on deep into winter and sparkle like jewels on frosty mornings. Disanthus cercidifolius is a broadly arching, slender branched shrub with redbud-like leaves. Growing 6-10’ tall and wide, it has small dark reddish-purple flowers in October, displayed against fall foliage of reddish-purple suffused with orange. This rare specimen is a fine-textured standout in any garden. As we go into fall and winter, remember that gardening is about taking the long view. Design your garden so its structure is enjoyable and constant with the adornments of flower and leaf color becoming the finishing details of the design rather than the totality of its substance.

By Charlie Shull
Skylights Fall & Winter 2011, Vol 26, No. 3

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