The Garden in Winter: Plant for Beauty and Interest in The Quiet Season

This book by Suzy Bales has so many beautiful photographs and ideas on how to add interest to your garden in winter. It is meant to inspire and get your creative mind going. Bales collects tips from many different sources and knows how to capture the beauty in nature.

It’s a perfect book to look through and pick up ideas while looking at your early winter garden through your window while you sip a cup of tea nicely tucked in your favourite armchair.

There is a chapter on Christmas wreaths, center pieces and arrangements. It is so lovely to make ornaments and arrangements from nature, better yet using materials from your own garden and avoiding buying plastic ornaments all together.

My personal favourite is the Bales’ use of spray-painted dried allium that can look like snowflakes when painted white.

Now I need to venture into our LEGS Community Gardens to see what plant material is there to use.

spray painted allium
Dried allium Christmas ornaments

Many Suzy Bales gardening books, including The Garden in Winter are available at the Toronto Public Library.

The Garden in Winter: Plant for Beauty and Interest in The Quiet Season. Suzy Bales. Rodale, 2007.

By Dorota Rajewska