A New Year and a Naked House

Ah, it's a brand new year!  Time to enjoy flipping through the seed and plant catalogues and dream about how great the garden is going to be this year.  Sometimes I think planning and dreaming of the future garden is half the fun!

Winter is a good time to look back and take stock of how the garden went - and then look forward and make plans!   I have several things on my list already: starting my new shade garden, growing new fruits and veggies, and adding more good dirt and amendments to the veggie garden, since last summer the plants didn't grow as vigorously as I liked.

It's also a good time to look back and see how the existing flower beds did.  The front garden is the most mature part of the yard; we started it right after we moved into our house two summers ago.  This summer it did pretty well, full of successions of flowers, just like I like it.  In Spring, the bulbs were in flower:

With Summer bloomed the Salvia, then the Hibiscus, masses of Coneflowers, and, finally, the riotous Cosmos.

The Cosmos bloomed into Fall, when the berrying Winterberry shrubs and all the Autumn leaves put on their display.

And now it's Winter.  They say that winter is a good time to get a feel for the 'bones' of the garden, or the structure of it.  Let's see how my front garden is doing...

Uh, wow.  Well, other than some leftover Christmas decorations, there is pretty much, um, NOTHING going on in the front.  All I see is a sad, barren, exposed foundation!  There is one small, lone stand of River Birch trees trying to provide some winter interest on the right hand side of the house, and on the far right we do have a little Blue Spruce, which will be a great winter focal point in... oh, a decade or so :)

Other than that, my poor house just looks... naked.

Well, I think this year's plans will now include enlarging the front gardens and adding some evergreen bushes!

I did plant the River Birch, as well as some Red-twig Dogwood shrubs in front for winter interest; however, both of those are really only noticeable up close.  In general I love and tend to plant deciduous bushes and trees.  Deciduous bushes are exciting and sparkly - they change with the seasons and often have beautiful flowers or fall foliage.  But...it takes awhile before they get large enough to add much structure to a garden.

Grow, little trees, grow!

I really do need some bushy evergreens with some nice mass and, well, coverage, to hide my house's bare foundation.  One of my missions this year is to add some shrubs that provide some structure year-round!

Anyone have any favorite evergreen shrubs to suggest?