Winter in my garden is pretty good. With great deliberation I made it that way. Lessons learned from others, particularly a skilled gardener by the name of Ann Kline. Her garden was my responsibility when she moved to Germany for four years, and I learned the true beauty of a garden in winter. In fact, some of her plants thrive in my garden and it was twenty-seven years ago that I worked in hers. One plant in particular forms great drifts, sometimes aggressive to a fault and on occasion something I have despised, running liriope or Liriope spicata eventually earned its place and is one of my favorite evergreen perennials.

Some call it monkey grass, this species spreads via rhizomes into solid drifts. Dark green leaves are long and slender like a grass although it's in the lily family and purple flowers, of some merit, arrive in late summer. Its dark green presence anchors the garden in winter. I can always count on it.

Planted up next to the liriope and following similar lines I have planted hundreds of hardy cyclamen or Cyclamen hederifolium. The foliage is silvery, patterned and beautiful in winter, impervious to changing weather. Ann's garden taught me to love cyclamen and plant lots of it. The leaves are low to the ground, growing from underground, bulb-like tubers. In summer they rest, avoiding drought. September flowers on cyclamen are quite desirable, popping up in advance of the leaves and surprising the gardener who may have forgotten they were there.

Few plants look fresh in September in our climate. Few plants look good all winter in our climate. Another perennial that holds my garden together is epimedium or barrenwort. Ann Kline first introduced me to this perennial. She grew a collection of epimedium sent to her by Harold Epstein, the pre-eminent epimedium grower, now deceased. If medals were given for superb performance and winter foliage, epimedium would win every year. I collect them and anticipate their early April flowers, but that is a small reason to grow them. It's January and February when they score big. Related to the shrub mahonia, the leaves hold their green all winter, so much so that they have to be removed by March first so that new flower stalks aren't lost in their persistence.

It is these three plants and one additional shrub that elevate my garden in winter. The shrub is Lindera salicifolia. Rare to a fault, I have procured three. Three lovely specimens with russet red leaves in winter. My first encounter with Lindera salicifolia was at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. It is unfortunate that something so lovely is so hard to find. Ann Kline would have valued its contribution to the winter garden as I have.

All of this I write as I sit on a bench, on a balmy fifty-six degree day in January. The bench is wood and an overnight rain leaves it wet; subsequently my seat is wet as well. And it's not the epimedium, cyclamen or liriope that made me walk into the garden. I came to visit my new galanthus. Better known as snowdrops, I ordered some very special bulbs from The Temple Nursery in Trumansburg, NY. A Mr. Lyman owns the nursery and he has no website or phone number. For a three dollar payment you receive a small catalog and the bulbs are sent to you in the green or in early spring after they have finished flowering. You have to promise to be home the day they arrive and plant them within the next two days. A nice postcard arrives confirming your order, paid by check or cash only, written in long hand, no doubt with a fine fountain pen.

As one might imagine, snowdrops bloom in winter, sometimes as early as January. I ordered $219 worth, some bulbs were $30 each. The leafy bulbs arrived on April 12th, 2007. I reassured Mr. Lyman, via mail, that I would be home. They are the size of a dime and the flowers not much larger. Some detail is included in the catalog as to where they should be planted. I followed all of the directions. Some of the species I ordered are double flowering. A few are hybrids, the anticipation is killing me. I check them out about every third day. I suspect that the fun of watching them emerge may be greater than actually seeing them in flower. Let's hope not.

To order galanthus in the green:
The Temple Nursery
P.O. Box 591
Trumansburg, NY 14886
include $3.00 for catalog