If it weren’t for evergreen plants our Canadian winters would play out like an old black and white movie. Tree bark and grasses are drained of colour–wet or frozen, outlined in snow and lit up by a steely sun. Unless, of course, you live on the far left edge of this country. Over there, everything glows an otherworldly emerald green, even on the dreariest of winter days, thanks to a mild, very moist climate that encourages rudely healthy mosses, lichens, algae and lungworts covering most anything that stands still long enough.

Foraged evergreen branches on our living room windowsill in the setting sun.

Yes, here in Fernie, we’ve got bonus splatterings of bright red thanks to our wonderful Mountain Ashes. Those gorgeous little berries look terrific hanging in snow-capped clusters but unfortunately they don’t do well if you clip a few branches for an arrangement. They tend to wither pretty rapidly. But this is where our fabulous evergreens come in, bringing life and colour inside.

Not quite ‘ever’ but even better

Evergreens make great indoor winter floral arrangements full of textural interest not to mention all that delicious green. And, being evergreen, as in almost forever green, they make exceptionally long lasting floral arrangements. Or should I say flora arrangements? But I recently read an e-newsletter that made me look at those evergreen sprigs in a whole new way.

The article was actually about choosing plant containers to get that achingly chic rustic-but-expensive look. (Researching for a friend). Evidently, “curating” your vase and containers collection should involve choosing with an eye to the wabi-sabi aesthetic. Now, I always thought that wabi-sabi was all about chipped vases and such. Basically, celebrating the beauty of imperfections, etc., etc. It’s a wonderful idea and I’m all for it. But I wanted to make sure I was on the right track so I looked up the actual translation of wabi-sabi from the original Japanese.

wabi: less is more

sabi: attentive melancholy

An awareness of the transient nature of earthly things and a corresponding pleasure in the things that bear the mark of this impermanence.

Another way of putting it is a way of appreciating beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” in nature.

A container is the side attraction, I realized. It’s really all about those evergreen stems, loosely arranged and set on my windowsill. As the snow continues to fall outside and each small leathery green leaf glows in the light of the afternoon’s setting sun, they are the nexus of fleeting, true, and primary.

Native evergreens for your garden (or windowsill)

I found my evergreen sprigs while on a greenery foraging trip with a friend a couple of weeks ago. Much to my delight, she revealed her favourite secret spot (along an old logging road) for collecting cuttings. There were all kinds of fir and spruce and pine and cedar, of course. But she also led me to some lovely, low lying evergreen shrubs.

One of the shrubs she pointed out she called Boxwood. I thought, how is that possible? Isn’t Boxwood from Europe or Japan or maybe both? Turns out I was thinking of Buxus, the family name for the familiar boxwood that forms a gazillion cute little hedges across most of Canada. But, surprisingly, we have our own native boxwood, Oregon Boxwood (Paxistima myrsinites), also known as Oregon Boxleaf, Myrtle Boxwood and (my favourite!) Mountain Lover. They’re the sprigs in the photo above that look, yes, just like boxwood.

The branches with holly-like leaves I’m pretty sure are Oregon Grape. I’d love to be certain about its proper name but there are too many variations and my botanical identification skills are not nearly good enough to be certain. Suffice to say, it’s a native of the Pacific Northwest and is part of the Barberry family (Berberidaceae), a genus that can also go by Mahonia, depending on taxonomy (just to make things truly confusing). If I were pressed, I’d say it’s likely Dwarf Oregon Grape (Berberis nervosa), also known as Cascade barberry, also known as Cascade Mahonia (Mahonia nervosa). Don’t ask.

If you’re interested in adding one of these handsome native evergreen shrubs to your garden, the Barberry/Mahonia/Oregon Grape is available (shipping in spring) at a variety of Canadian garden nurseries including Phoenix Perennials. Oregon boxwood? Not so much. If you find a Canadian supplier of this intriguing evergreen, I’d love to hear about it.