Winter forces us to look closer for beauty in the garden.  No more cantaloupe-sized hydrangea flowers, no flamboyant dahlias, no voluptuous tree peonies.  We look to the details to find beauty in unexpected places.

My neighbor has an English holly that hangs over the fence in the corner of our backyard.  The leaves it drops are thick and waxy, but over time they are broken down by the workings of millions of microorganisms.  The leaf veins, however, take longer to decompose.  Eventually only the skeleton remains.

The renowned Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf is famous for championing the cause of appreciating the beauty of death in the winter garden.  His designs always feature plants with winter interest in the form of seedheads, stems, and dried foliage.  In his words, he seeks out plants that “live well and die well.”