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It's no secret it was a very unusual spring, summer and fall. Spring was early, summer was hot and dry, and the fall was wet and windy. Although there were some nice fall colors, the rain and wind made for a short leaf watching season.

One way to extend the fall regardless of the wind and rain is to plant trees and shrubs next spring that will do exactly that, extend the fall colors. There are many that will hold their leaves into the winter and some that will hold berries until the birds eat them off.

There are many flowering crabapple trees that bloom beautifully in the spring, and then develop fruit that continues into winter. When you look for cultivars, be sure they are hardy for our climate zone. They are all good for zone four, but not all are hardy for zone three.

Mountain ash trees, like flowering crabapples, are members of the rose family. They produce small, colorful fruit that the birds can feast on all winter. I have two mountain ash trees that are loaded each fall with berries. The birds feed on the berries until early spring. European mountain ash is the most readily available at nurseries. And you might also find Showy Mountain Ash, a smaller tree with brilliant red berries that are native to northern Minnesota.

Deb Brown, now retired, has written hundreds of garden articles over the years. One of her articles was on Rugosa roses. They are winter hardy throughout the state and can produce red-orange fruits called rose hips. In order for the hips to develop, you must not deadhead or remove the roses as they fade. The ovary of each blossom expands to become the fruit, providing the flower was pollinated. These rose hips can provide a colorful background into the winter.

There are several shrubs that hold showy fruit in the winter. One of the most colorful is deciduous holly or winterberry. You need to know that winterberry shrubs produce either male or female flowers. This means that you need to plant both sexes in order to get fruit. However, it is not necessary to have a male shrub for each female.

Bittersweet is another colorful shrub that adds beauty as well as berries. Along with its vibrant red-orange berries it is valuable in bouquets and usually ends up in craft shops rather than feeding the birds. Bittersweet, like winterberry, needs to have both male and female plants in order to get berries.

I have several blueberry plants and the dark red color of their leaves in late fall and throughout the winter make it delightful. The European high bush cranberry and our native high bush cranberry are also shrubs that give colors and feed for the birds come winter.

It's hard to think about winter beauty and not think about evergreens. It's not only the branches covered with snow, but also the form, needle length, and size of the trees that are stunning.

Some trees are planted for their bark rather than their leaves or fruit. For example, the paper birch often planted in clumps, is beautiful any season of the year. The river birch has a curly, cinnamon colored bark rather than the plain white. An added bonus that has nothing to do with beauty is that the river birch is less likely to attract bronze birch borers than the paper birch.

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