For Memphian Zoe Nadel, the best time to be in the garden is not early spring when the azaleas and dogwoods fill it with color. Nor is it June when her hydrangeas dot the woodland with their blue mopheads.

Her favorite time is during the winter months when details that are lost in the lush foliage reveal themselves in compelling ways.

She said: In winter the quieter things takeover. It is esthetically pure.

Nadel, an artist who draws inspiration from her garden, notices how the sparkling white winter sunlight throws black shadows on the paths and ground covers.

Her eyes discern nuances of green in the yellowish shades of the moss to the burgundy-green of the azaleas leaves, which take on a coppery hue when the sun hits them in a certain way.

She said: I like the colors in winter. The sky is cold blue. There are greens in the plants, browns in the mulch and gray in the barks.

Vibrant colors that may be taken granted in the warm months are beheld with awe in the winter. When a carpet of shiny green mondo grass reveals berries as blue as lapis lazuli beads, the delight is magnified.

The mondo grass is her Emerald City, she said. Her husband, Dr. Alan Nadel, weeds and grooms the mondo grass and other parts of the garden with a physician’s precision.

Sometimes when she is having difficulty choosing colors for a painting, she will go to the garden for inspiration. Bits of bark, lichens, fallen leaves, mosses and other evergreens lead her to artful solutions.

A stroll through the garden on a crisp, cold day is an invigorating prelude to the hours she will spend cloistered in a light-filled studio on the second floor of her home.

Although the garden is still a shady place, several important trees have been felled by lightning strikes and storms. Two tall oaks, named Grandfather and Grandmother by Nadel, stood side-by-side for decades before and after their home was built.

Although they are no longer dominant elements, Nadel kept their sizable stumps as reminders of their grandeur.
One was sawed into a chair that became a favorite place for her son Craig, now a music professional in Austin, Tex., to play his guitar.

She said: It was a hard lesson for me when they came down. But I have learned we are only caretakers. We can not control everything that happens in our gardens.

She sees artristy in a small stump, culled from a tree trimming project, whose interior pulp decayed leaving a labyrinth of swirling papery parts.

When a small cherry tree was struck dead by lightning, she had Mississippi chain-saw artist Bo Hancock create a figure of Mother Earth from it. As it weathers, some visitors think it looks like The Scream, a painting by Edvard Munch.

Two pumpkins used a fall decoration for her front porch get moved to the back where the warm glow of their orange shells contrasts with cool greens of various ground covers.

Accessories are a stronger presence in the winter, Nadel contends.

Some living things, such as the bare branches of a Japanese maple, look more like sculptures than plants when the leaves are off.

This winter she gave nature assistance by having some overgrown junipers along her front driveway pruned in a Japanese fashion. Opening up the center of the plant created more of the light and shadow interplay she likes.

She artfully placed a weathered bare branch near some stones in front of the junipers and calls it a sticks-and-stones sculpture. It reminds her of the Southwest, a place she loves.

I see beauty in things that other people perceive as waste, Nadel said.

I happened to park right next to the truck owned by Felder Rushing at the recent houseplant sale at the Memphis Botanic Garden and saw the cute little garden he is now growing in the open bed.
Rushing, a former extension horticulturist, is always challenging himself and his followers not to make a big thing of gardening. His motto is: Just do it!
He said: I do not want people telling me they do not have a place to garden.
He once grew a nice crop of tomatoes in some sacks of potting soil in his truck, too.
These days he has a two-tiered box filled with johnny jumpups, a purple-leaf ornamental kale, Dusty Miller, compact nandina and a cascading juniper.
They have have survived two series of temperatures in the teens, Felder said.
He gives them slow-release fertilizer when he plants and then an occasionally boost with a liquid plant food. When just planted, he waters them a couple of time. After that, they are on their own. They are doing just fine, too.

Every year the Perennial Plant Association polls its members to find a plant that requires low maintenance, exhibits multi-seasonal interest and is suitable to many climate types to become its Perennial Plant of the Year.
The designee for 2007 is Walkers Low, a compact catmint that blooms from May until frost if it is clipped back by about two-thirds after the initial flowers fade.
The silver-green foliage of Walkers Low is crinkled and aromatic. Its small blue-purple flowers cluster on arching stems that reach 36 inches tall. The plant spreads to 30 or 36 wide.
All of the 20 species of catmint (nepeta) that are commonly grown in gardens contain the chemical, nepetalactone, which is attractive to some cats. Cats become especially intoxicated by catnip, Nepeta cataria and will damage plants by rolling and writhing in it.
Walkers Low, a selection of Nepeta x faassenii first found in Ireland, does not seem inspire extreme feline activity. But if you have an outdoor cat that is bonkers for catmint, plant or do not plant it accordingly.
The three cats I have shared space with over the years have not been particularly attracted to catnip. About 50 to 60 percent of all cats do respond to it, according to several organizations for cat lovers.
Catmints have been favorites of herb gardeners who often pair them with other gray and silver-leaf plants such as sages, thymes and lamb’s ears. The leaves, which have a lemon-mint flavor, can be brewed into teas thought to ease cold symptoms.
They are often grown with roses to hide their unattractive lower stems. The PPA suggests planting them near the lemon-yellow Moonbeam coreopsis and Moonshine yarrow; deep purple May Night salvia or the purple-pink dianthus, Firewitch.
Walkers Low makes a great border along a walkway and is also good in containers. Bees and butterflies are attracted to catmints while damaging deer and rabbits are not.
Catmints like 4 to 6 hours of sunlight, well drained neutral soil. Walkers Low has few pests or diseases. Once established it is drought-tolerant.
Walkers Low will be available at the Memphis Botanic Garden 2007 spring plant sale April 13-15.