Greens in the winter (not the kind you eat!)

While it's true I now garden primarily for food, I also think about other needs when I plant.
And one of them is my need for green in the garden in the winter. And no, that doesn't mean 'greens' grown under plastic, like my neighbors down the street at the little garden that could.

As I have said before, I don't grow winter crops-- I'm just too busy at work, and I'd rather not do something than do it with less than all my attention.

But I have planted evergreens around my one acre lot in strategic places for viewing, and I do make a wreath or swags from these trees and shrubs every December. It's amazing how a bit of green accented with red berries can cheer me up on a dreary day.

My favorite evergreen is the male Ilex opaca ( a holly native to much of the East Coast) which I planted as a rooted cutting from Appalachian Nursery in 1994.  It's now twenty feet tall, and gorgeous:

But since it's a male, it doesn't have berries.  Luckily, my one male holly can pollinate many closely related species, including the native Ilex verticillata, which drops it's leaves but sets lots of bright red berries:

The big holly also pollinates some hybrid English hollies along the eastern edge of the garden, and their shiny leaves make a nice contract with the matte leaves of the opaca in an arrangement:

The other day I took cuttings from all my hollies, including the small leaved glabra,

as well as branches from arborvitae, juniper and bittersweet (yes, I work hard to kill all the bittersweet, but some survives, and it is pretty):

I tied them all together with wire into two swags, then hung one from the pillar on my front porch:

The second swag adorns my beloved dry stone wall, a relic of the farm that was here long before my house:

It's amazing how these two simple arrangements of red and green cheer me up when I see them every night as I roll my truck down the driveway at dusk.