130 PruninG Perennials
them also frequent the gardens. These visitors
include finches (gold and house), red-breasted
woodpeckers, juncos, chickadees, tufted titmice,
cardinals, nuthatches, and sparrows (song and
American tree). They visit to collect and eat seed from
perennials (including fallen perennials) such as
echinacea, heliopsis, and rudbeckia, or to use the
perennials as cover and resting grounds. Some
people bring cut branches into their garden areas for
the birds. Don’t think just because a perennial is
going to fall that it should be removed from the
winter scene. If the perennials weren’t there, the
birds would have fewer places to take refuge.
If you want some green in the winter, why not go
for painted arum (Arum italicum ‘Pictum’)? In a
protected site, painted arum will give you an almost
tropical look with its lance-shaped, silver-marked
leaves. I love the gray provided by lavender (Lavan-
dula), common sage (Salvia officinalis), and lamb’s ear
(Stachys byzantina) during the winter, contrasted
against the deep green of Dianthus deltoides or
evergreen candytuft (Iberis sempervirens). Pair
Helleborus foetidus (with its glossy purple-tinted
foliage and yellow-green flower buds that form in
the autumn and hold through the winter) with the
scarlet-streaked, gray-green foliage of Geranium
macrorrhizum, and you have a combination worth
venturing out to see on an otherwise stay-huddled-
in-the-house day. If the snow is too deep to allow you
to enjoy these low-growing beauties, cross-country
ski around a garden bearing grass genera such as
Calamagrostis, Miscanthus, and Panicum highlighted
by seedheads of Iris sibirica and Rudbeckia nitida
‘Herbstsonne’.
There are many low-growing evergreen perenni-
als as well as tall perennials with evergreen or
semi-evergreen basal foliage. Some plants will be
evergreen in milder climates or in winters with
early and persistent snowfall. They may look a bit
forlorn in more severe situations after snow, wind,
and subzero and fluctuating temperatures take
their toll. Yet they have provided interest in late autumn and early winter, so
they have earned their keep as far as I’m concerned. Perennials that have not
evolved to be evergreen yet behave like evergreens due to milder conditions
may be shorter lived.
One year at the end of January, after a snow melt, I counted approximately 50
different species of perennials that had green basal foliage or evergreen to
semi-evergreen leaves, or leaves that simply remained green under a month-long
snow cover. It looked like spring green, with spiderwort (Tradescantia ×andersoni-
ana) shoots 1 in. or so high and beebalm (Monarda didyma) with 4 healthy leaves
per shoot. The list of green plants also included species of Geum and Stokesia,
Veronica austriaca subsp. teucrium ‘Trehane’ (which was an outstanding bright
yellow), Veronica alpina ‘Alba’, and basal foliage on Rudbeckia triloba. The foliage of
oriental poppy (Papaver orientale), which is usually left over the winter as a living