nature, Photography

Winter Plant Wonders

21 Comments

I like how these ornamental grasses provide visual interest in the winter – as well as good ground protection for our little quail. They’re such lovely medium brown/light brown colours.

It was also nice to see the red fruit of the barberry bushes. I understand that the city is planning to remove them because they’re invasive and are causing soil issues (they also apparently provide a great place for ticks to hide, too) but in the meantime they’re definitely a bright spot of colour.

I think this could be a type of wheat grass, but I’m not sure. I liked its compact seed configuration as well as how it was undulating in the wind.

I hope you have an enjoyable Saturday.

21 thoughts on “Winter Plant Wonders”

  1. Winter highlights for sure Lynette. Interesting about the barberry bushes. Obviously this does not apply to my purple barberry which seems to struggle to survive, but is still carrying on some 30 years later. Happy Saturday. Allan

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    1. Thanks, Allan.
      Apparently barberry is now banned in Canada (I didn’t know this until recently and I’m not sure if the ban applies to all barberry species or just some) and the city has decided to pull all existing bushes from public parks since it carries wheat rust disease and also causes acidity changes in the soil that are problematic for native species. Then there’s the tick issue. I knew barberry was invasive but I didn’t know it was causing this many issues. The things you have time to learn when you’re retired!

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  2. Years ago, my neighbor had a patch of ornamental grass in his backyard which he no longer wanted. I liked how it looked, so I offered to take dig up a few buckets full and transplant them to an area in my front yard to eventually screen from street view a large generator there. Within a few years, it not only screened out my generator, but “drowned” out several small bushes which I’d planted there previously for the same purpose. Still, I’m not complaining, because it’s lovely in its own way and unique in the neighborhood — so much so that, on more than one occasion, someone driving by (when I was outside) stopped to tell me how beautiful it looked!

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    1. I love your story and thanks for sharing it – a perfect example of how one person’s junk is another’s treasure. I’m not stuck on getting approval from others, but my, it can feel pretty great at times, can’t it?

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    1. I only recently discovered that barberry importation and sales have been (re)banned. There was a ban from about 1910-2000 but it was lifted; the Canadian Food Inspection Agency then banned barberry again in about 2005 because it carries diseases that affect cereal crops, especially wheat. I agree that they’re very pretty, especially in autumn and winter, but not at the expense of the problems they can cause, unfortunately.

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      1. Speaking of background, I took some pictures in Montana where I purposely looked for some high grasses to use as a … oops … I guess they were foreground, not background. But pretty just the same.

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  8. Agreed, the ornamental grass is pretty. They can be tough to remove from the garden though. We had a heck of time removing some invasive tall grass that the previous owners had planted in a couple of spots.

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    1. Yes, the root systems of some of these plants are something else, and the older they are, the more entrenched they are. A friend had an old one growing near her front door. When she took it out, the roots were starting to grow into the basement wall; she had to have repairs done! If she had left it any longer it would have been a lot worse.

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