After an exuberant display of flowers during spring and summer, the fall and winter    months leave gardeners longing for sunnier days.  A way to help overcome the winter blues is to plant winter interest in your garden.  Most gardeners know about adding texture, berries, branch color and bark, to a garden, but often flower seed heads are overlooked as a winter interest.

Leaving seed heads standing in your garden provides shelter and food for birds and insects in your yard, but seed heads also provide visual interest.  There is a quiet beauty when frost lies upon a seed head displaying its delicate wispy patterns.  Even those spider webs covering the seed heads put on a display like tiny garlands, then add frost… and those threads sparkle like crystals in a breeze. So while you’re combing through the garden catalogs during  February, look for perennials and annuals which produce interesting longstanding seed heads and distinctive structures.

A few to consider….
Anethum graveolens– Dill – Zone 2-11
Aster cordifolius– Blue wood aster (many other species) – Zone 3-8
Coreopsis grandiflora – Tickseed -Zone 4-9
Celosia cristata – Cockscomb – Zone 3-11
Echinacea purpurea– Coneflowers – Zone 3-9
Eupatorium maculatum – Joe Pye Weed – Zone 4-9
Foeniculum vulgare – Fennel- Zone 4-9
Phlomis russeliana-  Jerusalem sage-  Zone 5-9
Pot Marigolds – tall – Zone 3-10
Monarda – Bee balms  – Zone 4-9
Muhlenbergia capillaries- Pink Muhly Grass – Zone 6-9
Ornamental grasses (all varieties & zones)
Rudbeckia hirta– Black-Eyed Susans – Zone 3-7
Sanguisorba- Burnets  – Zone 3-8
Solidago – Goldenrod   – Zone  5-9
Zinnia elegans – Zone 3-10