top of page

Winter Gardens

Dallas is in the midst of a  typically un-typical winter… 75 and sunny two days ago… high of 38 today.  There’s a saying in Texas, “Don’t like the  weather? Wait a minute, it’ll change.”  

Thankfully, though, we haven’t  really been the victim of Old Man Winter that some of the country has  been.  But there is a bright side that  some never notice (probably because they are to too busy digging their cars out  after the snow plow buries them)… it is the wonderfully architectural quality  that gardens take on when blanketed in snow.  Rather than focusing on the rich riot of colors that flowers and foliage  present, we are able to see the bones and textural qualities of the garden.

What a  severe yet master artist old winter is.... No longer the canvas and the  pigments, but the marble and the chisel.  ~John Burroughs, "The Snow-Walkers," 1866

Nature  looks dead in winter because her life is gathered into her heart.  She withers  the plant down to the root that she may grow it up again fairer and stronger.  She calls her family together within her inmost home to prepare them for being  scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.  ~Hugh Macmillan, "Rejuvenescence," The Ministry of Nature, 1871

It is  the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the  soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.  ~John Burroughs, "Winter Sunshine"

I prefer  winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the  loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the  whole story doesn't show.  ~Andrew Wyeth

Of  winter's lifeless world each tree  now seems a perfect part;  yet each one holds summer's secret  deep down within its heart"  ~Charles G. Stater

Winter  came down to our home one night  Quitely pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,  And we, we were children once again.  ~Bill Morgan, Jr.

This garden belongs to our dear  friends and clients and is here in Dallas.  My husband, Cole, and his team at Smith Ekblad and Associates were the  architects, my team did the interiors, and Lambert Landscape Company designed  the extraordinary Italian influenced gardens.  It’s so beautiful to see it robed in white.

Love,

Sherry

bottom of page