On this snow day I'm enjoying all the photos posted online of gardens covered in snow. What makes the native garden so beautiful with fresh snow? The diversity of textures and structures are perfectly silhouetted with a layer of fluffy snow. Bare branched trees become works of art. Icicles hang from seed heads and grass stalks. Hydrangea is particularity beautiful with snow capped seed heads. Gardeners that have already cleaned up dead stems are missing out on these suspended cloud puffs in their garden. Coneflower seeds also makes a nice surface for collecting snow. The morning after a snow fall is a telling time to find bird and other wildlife tracks. A particular treasure is the feather imprint of a hawk's wings in the snow as it lands on it's prey. Snow tells the favorite trails of the garden and reveals the entrance to winter dens. Bird feeders are always popular spots on snow days and it is easy to spot the birds against a white background. Plants that hold their berries through winter like the  maroon berries of beauty berry add pops of color to the limited color palette of winter. The color shines even brighter when covered in a layer of ice. Winter blooming yellow Witchhazel is lovely with a dusting a snow. I admire the hardy little bees that venture out to pollinate the flowers. When preparing the garden for winter beauty be sure to leave sturdy plants standing. Clumps of arching grasses will become frozen ice fountains. Trees, shrubs, and garden art provide the architecture of the garden when all the paths become invisible.

A friend was getting rid of their outdoor garden train set and village. I'm not into trains but the miniature village looked interesting. So now I have 5 buildings, a gazebo, and a water tower that are all about a foot tall. I often think of my garden from the perspective of the creatures I see using it, the birds, voles, snakes, and insects. To them it is a lush jungle and this little village, I hope, will enhance that perspective. I plan to nestle the little buildings right between the plants. Maybe they will even be mostly hidden in the plants so a visitor will catch a glimpse of the building and have to take a second look. I imagine my garden critters will occupy the village soon. Mud dauber nests under the roofs, slugs beneath the porch, and spiderwebs in the gazebo. It will be fun to watch who moves in.

When I'm putting the garden to bed I keep my eye out for plants with decoration potential. For a framework, cut back vines can be twisted together to form a hoop or nest that can be hung up as a wreath or placed in the garden bed. Young flexible suckering shoots are easy to bend into woven baskets or tie other material together. Last years wreath frame or an old hose or bike wheel can even form the backbone of a decoration. After a sturdy frame is built add some evergreen boughs from an Eastern red ceder, pine, holly, or other evergreen that needs to be trimmed. Weave in some dried grass with curly tips or fluffy seeds for texture. Pine cones, berries, seed heads, sturdy dried leaves, feathers, nuts, and interesting sticks can be attached with string. Arrange the decoration to match the garden style with repetition, symmetry, and always some wildness. Be careful using seeds in the decoration that might germinate in an unwanted place. One year I ended up with a small forest of rattlesnake master at my doorstep. A natural wreath on the front door reminds us of the garden even when the weather makes outdoor experiences unpleasant. These small pieces of art beatify the garden and provide small areas of habitat for insects and nesting material for birds. A 100% natural wreath can be composted when it has reached the end of it's attractive period but not the end of it's life. Be creative, work with nature, build waste free, enjoy.

This week I attended a two day workshop on measuring landscape performance by the Landscape Architecture Foundation. The workshop was focused on methods to quantify the benefits of a landscape. Our society is very focused on the cost of things so we might forget about the other values such as bird habitat, clean water, or having a peaceful place to spend time. Even though this workshop was focused on larger landscapes like city parks we can use these same concepts in our backyards. When we plan landscape improvements instead of just thinking of features, like a pond, we need to think about benefits, like frog habitat and the sound of water. When we focus on the benefits of a landscape it's value is easier to understand. The presenter, Barbara Deutsch, shared a website with us, landscapeperformance.org, with many useful tools to measure the value of a landscape. In the benefits toolkit there are many links to calculators to measure all sorts of things like how much stormwater your tree can absorb or the value of reusing landscape waste. There is also a case study section with a bunch of examples of amazing landscapes that have been installed and evaluated for their true benefit and value. I hope we can use this information to design landscapes that are not just a collection of features or plants but landscapes with true value that make our lives and the world enriched.

This little article from the Missouri Botanical Garden gives 4 good reasons to garden with native plants and is a quick easy read if you are thinking of "going native". https://discovermbg.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/why-choose-native-plants-when-gardening/