Bright red berries for the winter garden

For not completely altruistic reasons, I'd like my winter garden to be for the birds. And if not the entire balcony, at least the front portion along the railing. You see, I'll gladly provide the birds supper -- breakfast and lunch, too -- and clean up after them in exchange for a few songs. Even a chirp or head tilt will do.

Though my small balcony doesn't have room for a Mountain Ash (Sorbus), Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) or any of the other top 10 berries for birds there are pockets of empty space for compact forms of greens and berries ...

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Winter's early arrival

Too soon, too cold. Sigh. Sigh again. (It's therapeutic.)

The grey, chilly frozen days are here ...

Recommended reading & viewing on some topics (other than the weather) in this post:

• Bark
• Berries (& birds)
  &
• Sighs

Sundays on the seawall

Though it can be hard (especially last week when plants, pots, & plans exceeded available space), I try to remind myself of the advantages of a  very small  balcony garden. Here's one: it allows time for long, meandering walks because you don't have to rake leaves.

And here are some moments from the the past three Sunday seawall walks when I looked, wondered and enjoyed.

This arrangement made me wonder: did nature create it or some passer-by with a compulsion to tidy the unruly masses of leaves on the path?

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The garden in winter - subdued, at rest, but never dull

Cornus canadensis (Bunchberry)

Cornus canadensis (Bunchberry, Dwarf Dogwood)

During a weekend hike in Pacific Spirit Regional Park, I turned the corner on one of the winding trails and unexpectedly came across a cluster of bunchberries beneath tall cedar trees.  This was my favourite find on a lovely, peaceful morning that I topped off with a visit to the garden centre.  And as beautiful as the plants were at Southlands Nursery, nothing surpassed the delicate Cornus canadensis.

At home later, I wanted to learn more about this plant  so I consulted my favourite book on native flora and found a few new online resources.  I especially liked the description at Paghat's garden:

This dogwood (Cornus canadensis) only grows to around eight inches tall. If you get down on your belly, a patch of it looks like the tiniest imaginable dogwood forest. The leaves are the same, the flowers are the same, everything about it is like a big dogwood, only teency.

A shade-loving Northwest native woodland groundcover, it can be a bit fragile in gardens if its needs are imperfectly met, but spreads by underground runners & by seeds thriving marvelously if it finds itself in the right situation.

Yes, fragile...and eventually dead. This is one of those native woodland plants I wanted in my balcony garden a few years ago. But C. canadensis needs moist, shady, cool conditions and prefers to grow near rotting stumps. So unsuitable for my balcony -- like trying to grow a fern in the desert.  

Here are three more excellent links for botanical facts:

Bunchberries of British Columbia (UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research)
Boreal Forest
Cornus canadensis (from Flora, Fauna, Earth and Sky: The Natural History of the North Woods)

Note: Bunchberries are edible so I can legitimately include them on this blog if not in my actual edible balcony garden.