In The Prairie Winterscape: Creative Gardening for the Forgotten Season experienced gardeners Barbara Kam and Nora Bryan show how to claim winter as a gardening season by exploring the different and surprising ways to create natural beauty during the "no-grow" time of year. Many prairie gardeners are unaware that their gardens can be winter wonderlands with as much visual appeal as the glorious summer landscapes they are accustomed to.

For most, the first hard frosts are a sign to put the garden to bed until spring, which in some places and some years can be as many as 260 days away. That's a long time for an avid gardener to be "on hold," yearning to work the soil and smell the roses.

But it needn't be so.

By selecting trees and shrubs with dramatic silhouettes and colorful berries and bark, creating ornamental focal points that are enhanced by delicate rims of frost or a light blanket of snow, and leaving flower borders filled during the winter months with a collection of sturdy plants and grasses boasting interesting seed heads, prairie gardeners can redefine their favorite pastime to include the "forgotten season." It's an idea whose time has come.

Barbara Kam is a Fifth House Books author.

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