By Frank Saltarelli, Montreal, QC

The problem with a one-season yard

Most backyards in this city get maybe four good months. Someone plants for June and forgets that November exists. Then the yard sits there gray and stripped down for half the year, and the owner starts thinking of it as dead space instead of a room they still own.

I don’t design that way. A backyard here needs to work in July and in January, or it’s only half finished.

Start with structure, not plants

Plants are the part everyone wants to talk about first. I start somewhere else: the bones.

Hardscaping, retaining walls, pergolas, fire features, pathways. These hold their shape and their look no matter what the temperature does. A stone path looks the same in August and February. A wooden pergola with good lines gives you something to look at when every leaf is gone. If the structure of a yard only looks good with flowers on it, the structure was never really finished.

I tell clients to picture the space with nothing green in it at all. If it still looks intentional, we’re building it right.

Layer in evergreens before anything else

Once the structure is set, evergreens are next. Not as an afterthought at the edge of a bed, but as part of the main plan. Conifers, boxwood, certain hollies, all of them hold color and shape through the coldest stretch of the year. They’re what keeps a yard from going flat and brown from November to April.

Deciduous plants and perennials come after that. They’re the seasonal layer on top of a yard that already stands on its own.

Think in four scenes, not one

I ask clients to picture their backyard four separate times a year, not once. Spring bulbs and fresh green. Summer at full color. Fall with the change in the leaves. Winter with structure, evergreens, and light doing the work plants can’t.

If a design only earns its keep in one of those scenes, it’s not done yet. Most of the disappointment I see in backyards comes from planning for the season you’re standing in and ignoring the other three.

Lighting matters more in winter than summer

People assume lighting is a summer thing, for evenings on the patio. In Montreal, it actually matters more in winter. The days are short. By five o’clock it’s dark, and a yard with no lighting plan just disappears for months.

Good lighting on branch structure, on a stone wall, on a path, keeps a backyard visible and worth looking at even when nobody’s spending time out there. It’s one of the cheapest ways to stretch the useful life of a yard through the months when nobody wants to be outside for long.

Materials that can take the freeze-thaw cycle

Quebec winters are hard on materials that weren’t chosen with them in mind. Freeze-thaw cycles crack the wrong stone, warp the wrong wood, and shift the wrong paver base. Part of building for four seasons is picking materials that don’t need to be babied or replaced every few years because they weren’t suited to this climate in the first place.

This is where I spend more time than clients expect, before a single plant goes in the ground. Get the base and the materials wrong, and no amount of planting fixes it.

What I’d tell someone planning a backyard this year

Don’t start with a plant list. Start with the four seasons and ask what the yard needs to still look right in each one. Build the structure first, layer in evergreens, then let the seasonal color fill in around something that was already solid before it got there.

A backyard that only performs in summer isn’t a finished design. It’s a summer decoration with a yard underneath it.