Because deciduous trees are stripped of their leaves in winter, the best candidates for winter gardens have peeling or colorful bark or branches weighted with colorful berries. I especially like the cinnamon-colored sheets of bark peeling off a river birch setula nigra 'Heritage'), or the darker, curling tissue that unreels from the trunk of a paper-bark maple (Acer griseum). The mottled bark of Japanese red pine (Pinus densiflora) is always a standout. The reddish, peeling bark of climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala ssp. petiolaris) is a show-stopper, too; I like to let this shade-loving vine scramble along a stone wall.

For color, it's hard to beat the red- and yellow-twig dogwoods, whose young branches turn rich shades of those colors in winter. I especially like the cultivar 'Cardinal' - its bark go from red to yellow and back again as the seasons change. I also like the bold red branches of Japanese maples (Acer palmatum) like 'Sango-Kaku' or 'Beni-Kawa', and the squiggly, yellow or red curlicues of curly willow.

	Red acts like a beacon in winter. The branches of this 'Sango-Kaku' Japanese maple turn scarlet in fall.

For fruit-bearing shrubs, I'm partial to crab apples (Malus spp.) and winterberry, especially Ilex verticillata 'Winter Red' and I. 'Sparkleberry' - both look especially good against an evergreen backdrop. They'll also need a male plant nearby to pollinate the flowers or there won't be any berries. For a berried, ground-covering shrub, I'm particularly fond of willowleaf cotoneaster (Cotoneaster salicifolius 'Repens'); it holds its leaves and berries through the whole winter.

Getting the most visual impact from bark or berries can be a little tricky. Without a contrasting background, they won't stand out very well. I like to place plants with berries or colorful bark against an evergreen background, either a hedge or a large specimen. Even a single spray of berries can look magnificent against the shiny, steely needles of a blue spruce. And, coated with a light blanket of snow, woodies with decorative bark or clusters of berries take on a whole new dimension of beauty.

	Red berries radiate against a blanket of snow. The berries of 'Winter King' hawthorn are especially eye-catching.

Any winter garden should include lots of evergreen conifers. But I think a garden composed solely of evergreen conifers is boring - there's just not enough variety throughout the seasons. So I mix the conifers with deciduous trees or broadleaved evergreens with green or bronzy winter color.

It's also important to vary the color, shape, and texture of conifers in the garden. There are blues, greens, and golds, and all kinds of shapes and sizes. There's enormous variety in their textures - white pines look soft; spruces look stiff; and false cypresses have an almost layered, flowing quality. They can be combined in hundreds of effective partnerships, as long as you maintain a sense of scale. A 100-foot-tall spruce would make an 18-inch dwarf false cypress look kind of silly if the two were planted side by side.

	Yellow makes green more vivid. The contrast it provides makes yellow winter's most important color.

To me, the most important color in designing a winter garden is yellow - you can't appreciate green without a contrasting touch of yellow. And there are plenty of yellow or gold conifers to choose from. One of my favorites is the dragon's eye pine (Pinus densiflora 'Oculis Draconis') - its variegated needles combine both colors. I've also made a few successful yellow-on-yellow plantings by pairing the spiky, bare branches of a yellow-twig dogwood with a Hinoki cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Crippsii'), which, to me, is the aristocrat of yellow conifers.

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