Gardeners who are tired of being surrounded by drab browns can spruce up containers and landscape beds with some winter color. Here are three favorites plants that can tolerate frosts.
Pansy and Viola. If bright winter color is what the gardener is after, pansies are hard to beat. Pansy and Viola are members of the family Violaceae and are two of 500 or so species in the genus Viola. Garden pansies are hybrids of Viola x wittrockiana derived from crosses with the species V. tricolor, V. lutea, V. amoena, and V. cornuta. The species name wittrockiana is in homage to the Swedish Professor Veit Brecher Wittrock who wrote a history of the garden pansy.
The most popular species of pansy derive from V. tricolor with the common names Johnny-Jump-Up and Heartsease, the common name in Europe; V. odorta is Sweet Violet and V. cornuta is Viola.
The modern pansy has large-flowered blooms with two slightly overlapping upper petals of two side petals and a single bottom petal that has a slight beard in its center. Colors of pansies run the rainbow and beyond. Purples and yellows, whites and purples, browns and yellows, yellows and whites – so many combinations. Single patterns and colors can be grouped or mix them for a wild display. Violas are calmer since the trend is toward single flowering. Both are winter hardy, surviving temperatures in the low 20’s.
Flowering or ornamental kale and cabbage. Ornamental kale is not used in the landscape as a flowering plant but it does have a place in the landscape for its unusual growth habit. Ornamental kale is often called flowering kale for its frilly centers. The centers are a profusion of leaves that resemble a blossom, yet the centers are not blossoms, rather are rosettes of frilly leaves that resemble a flower. The center rosette of leaves stays tightly bunched in cold weather.
Both kale and cabbage are cool season members of the Brassicaceae family, surviving temperatures down to 20° F. Colors of both become bolder in cold temperatures. They form from heads reaching k12 inches in diameter. Colors vary from white with green or red margins, purple with red or white margins.
Ornamental kales and cabbages are effective as container plants and can form a striking bedding plant. Most are purchased in 1-gallon containers where the plants have already grown to their mature size.
Ellen Peffley Harp, a retired professor of horticulture at Texas Tech University, writes about gardening for several Texas newspapers
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