One of my favorite subjects, Winter Interest! We never have snow, but we do have lows midwinter that sometimes briefly dip to 15 degrees Fahrenheit. When it turns that cold, evergreen daylilies will die back and open camellia blooms will turn brown, to recover quickly when it turns warm again.

Some of my favs:
Deciduous Trees and Shrubs with Berries, like Dogwood (Cornus Florida), and exfoliating bark, like Oakleaf Hydrangea.
Annual Rye Grass to overplant a lawn that turns brown in witner.
Hardy bedding plants like violas, snapdragons and calendulas.
Perennials with evergreen foliage, like Iberis, certain daylilies, Lycoris, spiderwort.

Nell

Hardy annuals such as pansies and snapdragons should work in your area. I grew them in my previous Zone 6 garden. When it snowed, they would droop a bit and then pop right back out when it warmed up. Rhododendrons have great leaves that stay green even in the coldest winter and provide beautiful blooms in the spring.

Grasses help, and so do plants that make seed heads like our many fine native plants - they can attract birds...and yes, you can change your focus completely from the death in the garden to life, too!
Focus on the birds, focus on the beautiful things that surround us in the winter. That helps take way from the brown.
Evergreen plants help too: hellebores, evergreen ferns, evergreen shrubs (not just conifers but broadleaf evergreens like Nell mentions)- they all help.

I have areas I just cut back all the way and put to bed right now, but I also have areas where there is focus on the shape of the plant like the japanese maple with bright green stems or the peeling bark of the natchez crepe myrtle.

I line planting beds with boxwood or back them with holly, and/or use liriope or other evergreen groundcovers, and/or plant some azaleas, gardenias, conifers, or other evergreen shrubs in the beds so that my gardens are not bare in the winter.

When I put my very first flower bed in, I made the mistake of planting all perennials and nothing was left in the winter. Finally hated it so much I dug the entire thing up and now I think about how future beds will look in the winter before I plant anything else. :)

Here in northern Virginia, I use hellebores (these are a favorite), nandina (constantly trimming and pulling to keep it from spreading), liriope, ajuga reptans 'black scallop', bergenia, camellias, euonymous, azaleas, laurels, rhodies, and a couple of hollies that are old, very tall, and open. I know I am forgetting some things. I love the bare trees, too. On the all-too-rare occasions when we get a good snow (I'm a teacher-what can I say-I LOVE snow), the yard is beautiful. Oh, and I always put in pansies in the fall. They will bloom through the winter sometimes. I've even had the blooms peeking out from under the snow!

It's funny, I've never really given much thought to it, but then I live in an area where a lot stays green year round. In the front yard we have a live oak, magnolia, and Formosa azaleas ... all evergreen. Some years I overseed the small lawn area with perennial rye.

In the back yard ... more azaleas, winter honeysuckle, abutilons, sweet olive, camellias, ligustrums, banana shrub, gardenias, and ferns. Even some of the perennials like pineapple sage, firecracker vine, and turk's cap will continue blooming unless we have a hard freeze.

Guess I've just been lucky with my choices.

I live in the Midwest, just off the Lake Michigan Southern Edge...we have the winter blahs here too...there are two solutions...visit somewhere warm and green, and subscribe to Gardening Magazines and seed catalouges and make summer plans on paper.. :) Evergreens are pretty much our ONLY green :) Tho you can have some texture variety minus color...fresh snow on textures can be pretty tho it doesnt do much for the winter blahs..it just shows you beauty can be in other forms too :) I have quite a time with the winter blahs...I can still bear it in January and maybe early Feb, but from mid Feb on...until May before it gets nice here on a regular basis, I have quite a battle with the blahs.. I am jealous of ANY gardeners south of here who don't have constant snow cover and even more so jealous of those of you who have some degree of green..One thing, I do find that helps..is to think birds :) Feed and watch...the color of the birds on the white snow can help a bit.....just a bit, but some. I also enjoy looking at the pictures of the warm weathe gardens you southern gardeners have then ....

I'm going to have to google a bunch of these plants to find out what they are.

Birds? I have four of those inside the house and they're pretty colorful. :o)

Oh I have struggled with the winter doldrums and posted on this on some of these forums. I came from zone 9b to zone 7b, it was a shock.
I have done what many here have posted about. Main points: add evergreens - I have hollies, camellias, hellebores, Little Gem Magnolia, Carolina Sapphire looks like a Christmas tree. I make sure I have early bloomers - daffodils, quinces, forsythia. I make sure I have some flowers in winter - hellebores, camellias, I plant pansies and flowering cabbage/kale. Very important I have 3 double shepherd hooks and feed the birds all winter. Move the shepherd hooks closer as the birds get used to them and you will have a fairly close up view. Look at your view and make sure you have something nice out of your important viewing windows. I have beautiful camellia right outside kitchen window where I am cooking, washing, also an evergreen leucothoe, and a Coral Bark japanese maple which is red bark in winter right there too. Also a bird bath there. Outside the back window (a big window) is where I have the "Christmas tree" and magnolia, and all the bird feeders and another birdbath. This year I added yew I also have carolina jessamine and added many nandina firepower which are evergreen and very colorful in fall/winter.
I plan to take extra vit D this winter, I think I am suffering a withdrawal in winter from lack of sunlight exposure!

Laurie

Who can have the winter blahs in my zone? I might not have perennials or annuals in bloom, but winter is the time for me to move things. I have camellias too. It's also the perfect time to sow seeds in containers outdoors, root cuttings in the basement under lights from tender plants brought in before the frost killed them. Wintersown.org. It really works.

Actually, I enjoy the quiet time with no serious gardening chores to do.

I also like seeing the bare shrubs and trees and always leave most perennials standing and they look wonderful with frost glistening or topped with snow.

That's my time to think about next year and plan orders. I will start some things under lights by January. I will do daylily seeds as soon as they are ripe and will have lots this year.

I have always wondered when you southern gardeners get to take a break!

"I have always wondered when you southern gardeners get to take a break!"

We don´t! It can be very overwhelming at times. After our long, dry, hot Summers, it feels so good to have Fall and Winter in the garden. I garden a lot for these times of the year.

As the others have said, Winter is the time for the evergreens, berries and interesting barks. I have a "Christmas tree" planted by the main steps in the front garden and a sweet gum, which has exquisite bark and looks like a sculpture. Then some of the evergreens that do well for me are laurustinus, nandinas, hollies, camellias, strawberry tree, New Zealand tea tree, bottle brush shrub, photinia, myrtle, ceanothus, all sorts of lavenders, santolina, azaleas, gardenias and small conifers.

Over the past couple of years I have been adding red twig dogwoods and I love the way they look in Winter. Begonias will often bloom until December and pansies all Winter long. Cyclamen also do well outside and provide splashes of color around Christmas time. I have a whole hedge of firethorn (red berries) and this is a wonderful source of food for the birds, as well as beauty. Cotoneaster and beautyberry also provide great interest in the form of berries.

Plans for this year include adding winterberry, maybe fotherghilla and a witch hazel, if I can find the room, sigh...

Eduarda

Did anybody notice that I labeled the Kerria 12/29/2009? It will look that way on that date, but the pic is last December. It is hardy to zone 4. It looks great tumbling down a slope and I always admire Kerria japonica in Tallahassee along the street that runs south from the old Capitol building. Little yellow blossoms are a plus.

Many of you mentioned Pansies for winter. I like to use the smaller but sturdier Violas. They bounce back faster after a hard freeze and last longer into warm weather. Sometimes they reseed.

A good tool for planning is to take pics in December of every bed. You can see your 'bones' well. Some of mine are painful to view, lol, but very inspirational as to where the real needs are. When pine straw starts to fall, I'll be putting some areas to bed, as GGG suggests.

Nell

Nell, I just planted a kerria japonica. How tall does yours get. In the picture it looked short. Mine is a shrub that gets 4 feet tall. Are we talking about the same plant?

About five feet or so. Actually it weeps over. It's down off the highway (and the driveway) next to the fence, so it has to grow uphill instead of gracefully spilling down a bank. This Kerria has been here for fifty years or so, never any care. It just fills space that would otherwise be mowed. This has single flowers. There are double and single flowered Kerrias. Kerria is another of those plants that has a distictive odor, like lantana and vitex.

I love ornamental grasses year round. I leave them standing when they turn brown and they are pretty (to me) whether there is snow on them or not. I have several clumps in my yard with my fav being Miscanthus 'Morning Light'. I also leave my coneflowers and sedums uncut; the sedums for me and the conflowers for the birds. I have an arbor in my backyard where Sweet Autumn clematis is planted. It covers the arbor and looks pretty when the snow is on, after frost hits and it turns brown. I look out my dining room window and imagine what it will look like again in spring and summer-love fall too!

Like others, it is a good time for me to make plans and think about changes I want to make.

Loved your pictures, Nell. You're making me miss the camellia I had in the last house. It was very tall and columnar and pale pink, and it got covered with very profuse blooms in the summer.

Rock Oak, that's funny because I have pansies and they only bloom in summer. I haven't tried the snapdragons but I should.

I just looked up hellebores. Pretty. I've never seen them or heard of them. What I looked at said it included my zone, but I wonder why nobody around here has any?