Some people seem to think that gardens merit to be viewed only when there are flowers. Well, the annual bloom cycle in my garden is at close to its minimum, and yet, I'm happy at what I see. Part of it is that my garden helper is back after a wet week when he couldn't work, and he has been mowing. It's amazing how mowing will beautify a garden, bringing it into focus. Here much of the grass grows in the winter, and the smooth mown swathes of bright green are lovely, and lively, in themselves.

I grew up in north Florida, a place with a four season climate and an abundance of evergreen and deciduous plants both wild and cultivated. When I moved to the farm, the first thing I did after my first winter there was to plant box, because my eyes had been so starved for green during the winter. There is very little native evergreen growth here. The box was followed over time by sarcococca, photinia, bay laurel (a mistake, that), Leyland cypress, cotoneaster, holm oak, olives, palms, and finally by Italian cypresses. These are all pretty ornamental year 'round, but stand out particularly after leaf fall. We use the Italian cypresses to outline the main walk down through the big garden, and to define focal points. Some of these plants, like the brilliant Cotoneaster lacteus, fruit marvelously, with abundant bright red berries that last through the winter. They offer contrasts of texture and color, for example the shifting smooth silver of the olives against the rough dark green of the cypresses. There are also the subshrubs, plants like phlomis, shrub germander, rosemary, all evergreen, with their range of textures and greens.

I like deciduous trees and shrubs that reveal good structure when their branches are bare, like oaks, flowering ash, Japanese persimmons. The hedges are all mixed, as pure evergreen hedges are heavy, and, if they're monocultures, especially clones, boring. Also a wasted opportunity, in my opinion. Photinia as a monoculture is really dull, like plastic, but those glossy green leaves and new red growth are pretty wonderful mixed in with deciduous shrubs. Also I like to see my hedge plants free in their growth rather than pruned into geometrical shapes.

This is a busy work period in the garden, with planting going on until the end of the year (not beyond that, I hope) and much cleanup going on. I've been pruning here and then, gently limbing up growing oaks, clearing grass around the bases of roses. We've had some good weather this month (really too much: ground water levels are low), pleasant for working outside, and blue skies and sun really dress up the place. Of course, a good deal of the garden I see is in my mind, visualizing how it will be once the newly planted hazelnuts, roses, flowering ash, phlomis and sage and so forth have started growing well. But even objectively, parts of the garden are looking good. And there's plenty to do there, so it's never boring. Next month the winter aconite and sarcococca and snowdrop will get going blooming, and by the end of February we'll have hellebores and sweet violets and snow crocuses, and it will just keep accelerating from there. But even in December, the garden is just fine.