In much of Canada and the northern United States, for half the year we have no leaves and flowers on our plants, so planning for colour year-round means thinking about colour in the very early Spring, late Fall and Winter months.

Bring Colour Year-round to Your Yard with Evergreen Trees and Bushes

To have colour year-round, first start with your trees. Evergreen trees will be green all year. Lodgepole Pines are native to the Calgary area and when growing solo, they spread to 10 feet or 3 metres wide, and have lovely open branches. I have grown flowers under them and in my first yard had a wild Rose vining up the pine. Majestic Ponderosa Pines are great for large spaces. Pines don’t suck up as much moisture from the soil as spruces so are better companions than spruces with other plants.

Smaller varieties like a Mountain Pine, or Montgomery Blue Spruce, will fit in small yards. Dwarf Mugo Pines or Slowmound or Mops Mugo Pines are bushes that provide green accents. Bird’s Nest Spruce is a low spreading option.

Upright junipers are another small evergreen tree to consider. They do not like moist or clay soil, doing best in sandy soils in nature. Moonglow is a silvery variety, Wichita Blue is more blue and Medora is a smaller deep green colour. Sometimes you will need to water the needles with a watering can in dry winter months to keep branches from browning.

Juniper shrubs generally do well in Calgary. I prefer the ground hugging varieties like Prince of Wales and Blue Rug Junipers as they need little maintenance. They take up a good amount of space too, if you’re replacing lawn, growing 6 feet or 2 metres wide. Calgary Carpet and Buffalo juniper get about a foot (30 cm.) tall and 5-6 feet (2 m) wide and are also good choices. They often need lower branches, that brown out, pruned off yearly.

Deciduous Trees and Bushes that Provide Colour All Year with Colourful Bark

Deciduous trees lose their leaves in winter. Many have beautiful coloured bark that adds appeal in winter: Paper Birches, Trembling Aspen, Mountain Ash, many Apples. Amur Cherry trees have beautiful red bark. These trees often suffer from sun scald – when the bark cracks due to sun exposure. This can be prevented by planting bushes that are strategically placed to shade the lower trunk.

Deciduous bushes that have colourful bark visible in winter are Dogwoods, Yellow Twig Willows, Dwarf and River Birches, Nanking Cherries, and Double Flowering Plums.

Deciduous Trees and Bushes for Fall Colour

Deciduous trees they have colourful leaves in the fall are Amur Maple, Ohio Buckeye, and I love the golden yellow of Paper Birches.

Deciduous bushes that have colourful leaves in Fall are Burning Bush (crimson red), Sumac and Nannyberry – a tall cranberry variety. Cotoneaster has been a hedge bush of choice largely because of its Fall colour. It has become invasive into natural areas though, spreading by seed from bird droppings, so better to plant Red Snowberry, also known as Coralberry.

Flowers to Plant to Have Colour Throughout the Growing Season

For the growing season, a variety of flowers that bloom at different times provides a changing symphony of colour from April through September. Snow drops are a bulb and are usually the first to bloom in Calgary. Tulips, Daffodils and Hyacinths are other bulbs that bloom a bit later in the spring.

Early blooming native perennials are Prairie Crocus, Three-Flowered Avens and Shooting Star. Commonly known as Easter Rose, Helleborus Niger is an early bloomer too – blooming in April.

Perennials that have long blooming times in summer are False Sunflower, Blue Sage, Beebalm, and Ever-Blooming daylily varieties.

For perennials that bloom in Fall, plant Liatris or Blazing Star, Fall Asters, and Goldenrod. Goldenrod can spread – so plant it where it can be contained.

I also love to plant different groundcover plants that bloom at different times throughout the growing season. I will devote another blog article to those plants.

Annuals Add Colour All Growing Season Long

I garden with perennial flowers that come back year after year. In our yard, my mom does add annuals in the garden bed for more colour. She also plantspots of annuals on the deck. If you have the time, budget and inclination to plant, water and deadhead (remove spent blooms) them, many annuals bloom for most of the spring and summer. For fall display, annual Mums can be purchased for your planters or beds.

With a thoughtful selection of trees with different needle, bark and leaf colours, by planning your perennial flower selections to choose long blooming perennials that bloom at different times, and by supplementing with colourful annuals you can have a changing symphony of colour year-round in your yard. Enjoy!

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