A season of quiet beauty

While others mope, at least one gardener I know celebrates winter in her garden. She loves the low winter light, the dried seed stalks, the berries, the moist dark earth that appears between plants as she prunes and cuts things back. While savoring the spots of color -- the last few roses or the ripening oranges -- she also likes the brown Bermuda grass lawn in her backyard and makes no attempt to hide it. When Judy Horton steps outside, she wants to know it’s winter.

Sure, it’s possible in Southern California to have a garden that is essentially changeless, that looks green and summery in any season. You simply have to choose the proper plants and live in an area that doesn’t get too frosty. Many newcomers to the state revel in this year-round green -- it’s often cited as one reason they moved here -- and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But walk up a canyon or trek though the chaparral, and you’ll see that winter does come to the Golden State. Many trees lose their leaves, and shrubs are covered with berries. Tan, brown and rust-colored seed heads decorate the hillsides. Grasses become dry and crisp, or nearly disappear, even though new growth is visible at their base. A hike though Sycamore Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains in January is quite a wintry experience, even though it begins at the beach, where the temperature might be quite warm.

A little seasonal change in a garden can be fun and refreshing, even if it’s just a mulch of wet and rotting leaves underfoot, a few cut-back roses or a little bare earth, freshly weeded and raked. It’s the sparseness of winter that makes spring special. Change is good.

Horton, an avid plantswoman and the organizer of the Garden Conservancy tour for Los Angeles, made a big change when she left her job as a city librarian to become a garden designer 10 years ago. As a designer, she likes winter because it “reveals the bones of the garden.” After leaves fall and plants get tidied up, the structure of a garden appears from the normally tangled tapestry of leafy plants. You can see what makes a garden work and what holds it together. “I love the simplicity of winter,” she says.

Her own garden in Windsor Square, near Hancock Park, seems designed to showcase this cold season, though it’s entrancing in any. Tokens of winter are everywhere. Berries decorate the garden until the birds have eaten their fill. Other seeds and pods hang from trees and shrubs, and she doesn’t cut off the browned, drying stalks on perennials until they topple or “get really ragged.”

“If you want a garden to have wintry interest, don’t cut off the old flower stalks or seed heads,” she advises, and there is an elegant example of this on her patio, where several ‘Storm Cloud’ agapanthus grow in big pots. The deep purple blooms faded and dropped off in early summer, but she let the 4-foot-tall and slightly twisted stems remain until they turned a bleached tan. Jet black seeds still cling to some.

Nearby, papery brown seed heads droop from an oakleaf hydrangea planted in front of a similarly colored wood fence. It looks quite elegant, though only a few reddish leaves cling to the tips of branches. Not far away, the dried mineral-red husks of persimmons have finally split open, revealing glossy, bright red seeds inside. Even bare branches can be grand, like those of the coral bark maples Horton has planted in several spots. She says it’s one of the best Japanese maples we can grow, and certainly the most dramatic in winter.

The many succulents in her garden do their part, but evergreen shrubs are the “bones” of which she speaks, holding the garden together. Sweet olive (Osmanthus) is a favorite because it blooms in winter and has a heavenly scent; so are the native toyons for their berries. But ordinary boxwood and myrtle abound, even on the patio and along the entry walk, where they grow in large containers.

Japanese boxwoods lead the way down the walk in winter, when the rows of garden hydrangeas that line up at other times become bare. In summer, when the hydrangeas are in leaf and then flower, the boxwood spheres are barely noticeable.

Larger boxwoods and fat myrtles grow in pots on the patio and help anchor a tall, sturdy arbor. In summer, vintage varieties of climbing roses cover it, but they are severely pruned in late fall, which lets in more light at a time when it’s needed. The winter sun skips along the horizon and sends shadows deep into a garden, but deciduous trees and vines can restore some of the light and warmth.

Winter sunlight has a distinct orange glow, which flatters gardens. Horton uses it to advantage by selecting plants that have orange flowers or fruit at this time of year. There are Valencia oranges and orange Rangpur limes ripening on trees in back and by the front door. Bird of paradise bloom by one tree, and nearby the orangy spikes of aloes are starting in. “Citrus and aloes are the colors of a Southern California winter,” she says.

She also likes the very different early morning light seen on some winter days, a misty, watery light that makes gray-leaved plants almost ghostly, as if they were covered in frost. “This is our version of a snowy morning.”

Various bulbs are pushing up, and some California poppies and old-fashioned purple iris are already in bloom in January, even though a few colorful autumn leaves still hang on trees like shards of colored glass. “It’s never totally winter in Southern California,” says Horton. “Things are always lingering or early.”

In winter, we can more readily see the gardener’s craft. Grasses get neatly topped by Horton and perennials cut back, divided and tidied up. Stakes stand ready for spring’s growth. Roses are neatly pruned, as are the deciduous fruit trees in one corner of her garden. They grow in front of a garden shed, where compost made from autumn’s leaves rots and containers are piled high waiting for summer’s flowers.

Snow may not bring gardening to a stop in Southern California, but, as Horton puts it, “while a garden is never finished, the closest it ever gets is winter.” Enjoy the break; it won’t last long.

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Embracing the short days and cool nights

The Horton garden gets its wintry look from many plants, but these are Judy’s favorites:

For berries:

Cotoneaster

Toyon (Heteromeles)

Pyracantha

For fruits:

Citrus

Feijoa

Persimmon

Pomegranate

For seed heads:

Agapanthus

Ornamental grasses

For flowers:

Aloe striata

and A. saponaria

Yellow flax

(Reinwardtia)

For grays:

Artemisia

Lavender

Succulents

For structure:

Cypress

Japanese boxwood

Myrtle

Privet

Rosemary