Year-Round Color in Mountain Landscapes
July 28, 2024 — Sunline Landscapes
Achieving vibrant color throughout all seasons in mountain climates requires careful plant selection and design. Learn our secrets to year-round beauty.
One of the most frequent questions we hear from prospective clients is whether it's possible to have a landscape that looks great year-round in a Utah climate. The answer is yes — emphatically — but it requires intentional design from the start rather than hoping that seasonal color will take care of itself.
Spring arrives in layers in the Wasatch Front. Early bulbs — snowdrops, crocus, species tulips — emerge while temperatures are still unpredictable, followed by ornamental cherries and apples in blossom, then the great flush of perennials as warmth consolidates. A well-planted landscape begins its spring display as early as late February and sustains it through June. That sequence requires advanced planning because bulbs must be selected and planted in fall, trees and shrubs for spring interest must be positioned where their display will be visible from key vantage points, and early-emerging perennials must be given the conditions they need.
Summer is the easiest season for color, but it's also the season where the most design mistakes happen. Landscapes packed with summer annuals are high-maintenance and look flat without texture. The landscapes that look best in summer are those with a strong structural backbone of shrubs and grasses that provide color through leaf texture, flower, and form simultaneously — with summer annuals used as accent rather than as the primary color source.
Fall color is where mountain landscapes have an extraordinary advantage that should be celebrated rather than squandered. The Wasatch is home to some of the finest fall foliage in the American West, and the right tree and shrub selection brings that spectacle into the private landscape. Oaks, maples, viburnums, and serviceberries turn in spectacular reds, oranges, and burgundies. Ornamental grasses develop seed heads that catch the low autumn light. Late-season perennials like rudbeckia and asters carry color into October.
Winter interest is the most underdesigned season in residential landscapes. Yet a landscape designed with attention to branching structure, bark texture, evergreen mass, and persistent fruit can be beautiful under snow. Crabapples with colorful fruit that birds haven't stripped by November. White-barked aspens and birches that glow against dark conifer backgrounds. Bold evergreen structure that keeps the landscape from looking completely blank when everything deciduous has dropped. Winter design is about restraint and structure — and when it's done well, it's the season that most clearly reveals the bones of a great landscape.