To: Salisbury Post

From: Jean Lamb-Rowan County Master Gardener Volunteer

Re: Garden Column for Salisbury Post  

While January and February are usually the months for gardeners to become couch potatoes, there are still gardens to visit and new plants to see.  You don’t have to buy a ticket to an exotic locale because there are gardens in Salisbury to visit on a sunny winter day.  The Waterworks Visual Arts Center Sensory Garden, maintained by the Rowan County Master Gardener Volunteers, has some special plants that are at their best during the winter months.

            The earliest tree to bloom at the Sensory Garden is the Japanese flowering apricot, Prunus mume.  It is a small deciduous tree covered with pale pink blossoms opening in January.  It has a delicate scent and a graceful branching habit.  It has been beautiful on the snowy days we have had recently.

            An old fashioned shrub that your grandmother may have called breath of spring or winter honeysuckle is blooming now.  Lonicera fragrantissima is the Latin name for one of the most fragrant and easy to grow winter shrubs.  The small white blooms are sometimes hard to spot among the round green leaves, which will fall this spring.   Winter honeysuckle has a long bloom period and is a favorite of honeybees out of the hive on a warm day.  Tolerant of sun or part shade and not particular about soil, a winter honeysuckle would be a good choice to add fragrance to a corner of the home garden.

Wintersweet or Chimonanthus praecox is not a familiar plant to most of gardeners but has a great fragrance in January and February.  The small yellow flowers open over a long period of time.  It has dark green leaves that turn yellow before they fall in autumn. It grows and blooms best in full sun.  Not a great beauty later in the year, wintersweet turns its spot in the garden into spring several months early.

            At the entrance of the Waterworks Sensory Garden is one of the Master Gardeners’ favorites, the winter daphne (Daphne odora).  This particular specimen is ‘Aurea marginata’ which has beautiful variegated evergreen leaves.  It is a beauty all through the year, but beginning early in winter has rosy pink buds that open in late January or early February.  The flowers are white when open and have a fantastic scent that perfumes the whole garden.  However, it is a fussy plant, requiring excellent drainage and protection from the hot summer sun and strong winds.

If you are planning a winter garden, there are several books in the Rowan Public Library that are excellent sources of information. The Master Gardeners’ favorites are Winter Gardening by Steven  Bradley and  The Winter Garden by Peter Loewer and Larry Mellichamp.

Jean Lamb is a Rowan County Master Gardener Volunteer, Class of '92,  that chairs the  Sensory Garden Project  which is located at the Waterworks Art Gallery   in Salisbury.