When the color of the landscape seems at its most somber, the Garden in Winter, radiating pure, clean beauty of detail, emerges from a milky-white blanket. Cloaked in snow, the restored gardens of Colonial Williamsburg are landscapes of contentment whose serenity after sensational shows of color captivates visitors season after season... Williamsburg visitors "have come to expect massive amounts of colors," all year long, Landscape Architect for the gardens of Colonial Williamsburg Kent Brinkley remarks.. and they do receive a display of colors, even under a snowflake carpet.

Designing on the basis of historical and archaeological "ballroom" evidence, original Williamsburg Landscape Architect Arthur A. Shurcliff-- once an apprentice of Frederick Law Olmsted and one of the original graduates of Harvard's Landscape Architecture program-- created the Governor's Palace to illustrate the prestige of the office as the sole and legitimate representative of the crown in England. North American Beech trees, boxwood topiaries and lead urns give the garden a "very formal, symmetrical, mirror image planting 'Renaissance treatment,'" explains Brinkley, and twelve barrel-shaped topiaries,-- "the 12 apostles"-- help to frame this historic ballroom. Each year, gardeners undergo "a pretty labor intensive task" of pulling up and replanting 3000-5000 tulip bulbs. Although the flowerbeds are the primary feature of the garden, and the annuals and perennials are typically put to bed for the winter, the snow-quilted landscape of these gardens nevertheless attracts brave seasonal visitors.

Also designed by Shurcliff, the very popular Prentis garden comes visually alive with the colors of hundred of bulbs in the spring, while withholding its structure-- "taking care of itself"-- during the wintertime. Fruit trees and Yopann holly hedging seem to fence in the garden, a colonial technique utilized to enable access to the fruit during harvesting. Visitors flock from all across the country to experience the Prentis Gardens' snow-draped evergreen ground cover and several cherished old red cedars during the surprisingly peak months of November and December.

Based on garden patterns depicted by colonial maps of North Carolina towns, the Bryan Garden encompasses two colonial, half-acre lots. An ornamental "garden of five parts," the garden design by Landscape Architect Alden Hopkins incorporates fruit trees (usually segregated) and outlines each section with English boxwoods. The garden's arbor at its western edge is covered with trumpet honeysuckle, and the evergreens, dwarf boxwoods and boxwood topiaries keep travelers interested during all seasons. However, winter landscape crews face the challenge of having to continuously knock the snow off the boxwoods to keep them from breaking!