LEMON CYPRESS ADDS PERFECT TOUCH TO THE COOL SEASON GARDEN

Using shrubs as annuals is an idea catching on across the country. I tried it, and am delighted with my first winter effort.

A few marauding, pansy-eating deer caused me to take this drastic action in my winter landscape. After having done extensive soil preparation and planting several hundred pansies, with flowering kale as companions, I found myself with only the kale. I went searching for something else to pair with its boldly beautiful iridescent leaves.

One of my local garden centers had just received a shipment of lemon cypress with its shocking, golden chartreuse needlelike foliage. The lemon cypress is known botanically as Cupressus macrocarpa and is native to the Monterey Bay area of California.

The lemon cypress looks like the perfect golden Christmas tree or topiary. Just think about the possibilities. Many of you already buy rosemary topiaries at Christmas or even the blue-needled pinon pine, so why not a lemon cypress? But here is where the discussion makes a turn. Many times these little topiaries are used just indoors for the holiday season and then left to die, or thrown away. Why not use them outdoors for a longer season if your winter temperatures allow?

The price of the lemon cypress was just right, and they have proved to be the perfect complement to the purple-foliaged kale. When they get backlit by the morning or afternoon sun they look like they are glowing.