Bright BARKS

For an extra burst of winter colour you can’t beat the vivid stems of dogwood, willow and bamboo, says Monty Don

This time of year is one I especially love. The days are getting longer and the garden is brimming with colour from bulbs such as snowdrops, crocuses, irises, scillas, hyacinths and the first daffodils. It will not be long before the first hawthorn leaves start to bud and appear everywhere, and the sap is already visibly rising in the naked stems of all deciduous trees and shrubs. This flushes them with new life and, in a select number of plants, with really vivid colour.

Bark comes in many shapes and forms, from the fibrous bark of the redwood, which is up to a foot thick and designed to resist fire, to the bark of eucalyptus, which sheds easily but is rich in oils and burns exceptionally well – in order to encourage bush fires to burn quickly as they pass through the trees, thus ensuring their survival.

But the barks I like best at this time of year are notable for their colour. The brightest colours are always in first or second-year shoots in the first quarter of the year, after their leaves have fallen and before new foliage appears. By far the easiest for the gardener to grow are the dogwoods and willows. The best known dogwood is Cornus alba, which usually has brilliant stems in shades of crimson. There are a number of C. alba varieties, all with red shoots except ‘Kesselringii’, which has melodramatic purple-black stems. Dogwoods will grow almost anywhere but are happiest in damp soil in full sun.

If you have damp soil, willow will grow more easily than any other tree or shrub. The golden willow, Salix alba ‘Vitellina’, has, as its name suggests, brilliant yellow stems; S. daphnoides has wonderful purple stems coated in cottony bloom; and S. alba ‘Britzensis’ has stems that are bright vermilion. As with dogwood, the trick to getting willow to produce the brightest and most vivid stems is to cut it right back to encourage it to throw up strong, straight, bright shoots. I suggest either cutting the oldest third of the plant every year or doing a dramatic chop, removing everything down to a stub every three years. This seems drastic but the plant quickly regrows – and it will give you a mass of material for cuttings.

All dogwoods and willows take very easily as cuttings. Cut a length of stem 6-18in long and push it firmly into the soil where you want it to grow. Nearly all will form roots and grow healthily within weeks. I also grow bamboos for their winter colour – in summer they are most suited to merging into a background. I have two bamboos that have been looking particularly good since November. One is Phyllostachys aureosulcata,

and as I write, the buttery, golden culms, or hollow stems, shine as bright as anything in the February garden. The other is the black-stemmed Phyllostachys nigra, whose polished black culms are extraordinary. It is clump forming, reaching perhaps 13ft tall and the same across, with arching, slender culms, green at first but changing to black in their second or third year. The more sun it gets, the quicker the culms will turn a rich black. It doesn’t like waterlogged conditions but will let you know if it’s too dry by dropping its normally dark-green leaves, while the culms turn grey.

Other bamboos with good colours include Phyllostachys vivax

‘Aureocaulis’, which is gold with a thin green stripe; Himalayacalamus falconeri ‘Damarapa’, a stripy mix of gold and green; Thamnocalamus crassinodes ‘Kew Beauty’, a glaucous green; and P. sulphurea, a rich olive green.

Monty with stems of red and yellow dogwood