Winter garden

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is regarding the kind of garden maintained in wintertime; for other meanings, see Winter Garden

A winter garden is, as the name implies a garden planted to either produce food, or at least remain visibly planted and slowly develop, throughout the winter, or else a garden whose plants will serve as living decoration all winter.

Vegetables which are typically, or can be, used in a winter garden include:

• Several breeds of winter hardy cabbage
• Certain winter hardy breeds of broccoli
• Winter rye is even grown where a summer garden will be, in order to protect the ground from weeds, and provide soil amendment when tilled directly into the soil the following spring
• Rosemary, which is evergreen and can even be grown as a christmas tree-shaped bush
• beets
• carrots
• alliums -- onions, chives, and their relatives are evergreen, though some may die back during the winter and recover in the spring.

One basic premise, in temperate or colder regions, to the winter garden is that the plants may indeed become dormant when snow covers the ground, but will grow each time the sun heats at least part of the plant to above freezing (snow or not), especially in regions where snow cover and below-freezing temps are not constant for months at a time. Perhaps the most famous "winter garden" is at the Biltmore Estate near Ashville, North Carolina.