An attractive four season garden brings beauty and value to your property year-round, thus increasing its resale price.
Layering is key to creating an all-season landscape. Layering perennials, annuals, fall foliage color and even evergreens gives visitors something interesting to view during all four seasons of the year.
1. Plan Your Plantings
Step one in designing a four season garden is to assess your landscape and research planting options. Look for perennials, annuals and shrubs with attractive flowers, foliage or fruit in each season of their growing cycle – whether this means flowers, foliage or fruit!
Consider woody trees with striking winter bark color contrast, like red and yellow twig dogwoods with their mottled or striped bark; deciduous plants such as birch (Betula spp) or oak (Quercus spp); for added drama in your garden.
Be sure to include fall and winter vegetables in your edible garden too. Cool-weather vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower and spinach do very well during colder weather; seeds and seedlings are readily available from nurseries or online for creating winter vegetable gardens.
2. Plan Your Watering
Water your garden regularly and thoroughly to keep it healthy. For best results, water early in the morning or late at night when sunlight doesn’t hit as directly, and avoid allowing any excess water to evaporate in the heat of day – this would only end up harming plants rather than benefitting them.
Choose shrubs and perennials with blooms throughout the year for year-round color, then layer them up to create an Instagram-worthy landscape.
Visit public gardens throughout the year for inspiration by seeing how their garden changes with each season, which will help you identify suitable plants for your climate zone. Look for deciduous trees and shrubs with interesting bark – red twig dogwoods or Japanese maples can provide excellent examples; blue oat grass can even provide winter visual interest!
3. Plan Your Fertilization
To keep a garden looking its best throughout the year, it’s essential that plants receive nourishment at exactly the right times. For vegetable gardens this means using fertilizers with chemical formulas tailored specifically to their maturation requirements.
Flowering perennials require fertilization before their new growth begins in order to reduce the risk of tender young shoots being killed by frost and reduce any risks of frost damage to new growth.
Gardeners in cold climates can create four-season landscapes by carefully planning and using evergreens, shrubs and container plantings to achieve four-season gardens. Textured foliage or colorful stems add additional visual interest in winter when flowers don’t bloom as often. To add even more visual interest consider including deciduous trees with spiky branch structures such as yucca to provide added winter color that can brighten up your yard landscape.
4. Plan Your Pruning
An essential part of creating a four-season garden is selecting plants with diverse colors and features, depending on your region and climatic conditions. This could mean including perennials, annuals or container plantings that bloom year-round as well as trees or shrubs with unusual foliage features.
To add depth and dimension in autumn, choose deciduous plants with vibrant leaves such as Japanese maples (Acer palmatum) and dogwoods (Cornus spp). Also consider including spring ephemerals that produce stunning displays before going dormant for the rest of the season.
Maintaining a four-season garden requires careful planning and regular attention in order to promote healthy growth and peak performance. By employing maintenance tips, strategies for plant health management, and regular soil testing, you can enjoy a garden that blooms year-round with beauty.
5. Plan Your Maintenance
An attractive garden requires consistent care throughout the year to keep its aesthetic appeal, yet studies show it increases property values.
Planning a four-season landscape starts with selecting plants that provide year-round interest, from evergreens such as boxwood and yew to deciduous trees and shrubs with colorful deciduous bark; such as red-twig dogwoods with their red-tinged branches as well as yellow, coral or pink bark on some maples and willows are stunning winter features.
Layered landscaping can help ensure a year-round presence of flowers in spring, greenery in summer and vibrant fall foliage as well as winter interest from berries and evergreens. Hardscaping features and flowers that attract wildlife will further add year-round appeal.
