Pot some colour this Christmas
Much as I love pots and hanging baskets full of summer colour in a way I love a planted up winter pot and basket even more. While the selection of plants available is so much more limited in winter it does give the opportunity to get creative by using permanent evergreen shrubby plants as fillers and centre pieces to contrast amongst the winter bedding colour.
Heathers and evergreen grasses can be great for this.The flowering colours available are more limited too but this is not a reason for your pots to lack impact. I have a client who requests all the flowers in the pots and baskets are white. You may think this a little boring but actually the visual impact is stunning and dramatic. It also ensures she has a white Christmas every year what ever the weather. This is not for everyone I know, I personally like whites with strong vivid reds, a bit of silver ivy to trail and a few berries to bring more of a Yuletide feel to my pots.
Another difference when making up winter pots is that it is best to plant more heavily than with a summer pot. A summer pot can be planted sparsely to grow on during the subsequent months, a winter pot should be planted as if it is complete at the height of its season as it will be doing virtually no growing before it is replaced again in late spring with summer colour.
Although you can plant your winter pots up any time from early November I like leaving the planting of mine until near Christmas for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because often in our generally mild early winter weather many plants from our summer displays are still performing quite well and it seems a shame to pull them up while doing so. Marguerite daisies, Bacopa, Lobelia and Diascia as examples. The second reason is that extra bit of outside decoration seems more appropriate and celebratory at Christmas and gets the garden freshly into the festive spirit of the season adding to many fairy lights that adorn gardens at this time of year.
Most of the flowering colour in winter comes from either Cyclamen or primroses. The Cyclamens are the highest impact and very showy in colours or dark and bright reds, pinky purples and clear pinks and the ubiquitous white, these being quite fragrant to. Primroses come in all colours some with fragrances as well. The yellows tend to be the strongest flowerers as they are the closest to the naturally occuring colour. I find that primroses are a much better option in early spring when they excel but at this time of year I find they struggle to provide a continuous flowering display.
There is also quite a good variety of berrying plants available now and they do look wonderfully appropriate at Christmas. They can be on the pricey side though but most can be planted out into the garden in the spring time. The best of all of these are the Skimmias that are supplied with abundant red berries at the moment and can be a large enough plant to become the height of a centre piece. Gautheria ‘Big Berry’ is a low plant with large red berries and there is also a white variety called ‘Pearls’ both are still showy but not quite as brightly berried as the Skimmia. Solanum pseudocapsium or the winter cherry has yellow, orange and red spherical fruits. For trailing plants ivy is really the only option although a strong Vinca [periwinkle] plant might give you a similar effect and again can be garden planted in spring.
All winter pots benefit from having some central height or a centre piece plant. If you already have a pot with a box cone or a bay tree in it you can use these as your height and work some colour around them. Otherwise little conifers are available for this purpose at the moment but any evergreen shrub will do the job especially if it has a contrast foliage. I particularly like to use Dodonaea viscosa ‘Purpurea’ or a spikey red leaved Cordyline both of which have interesting leaf colour and shape.