The great late show
Enjoy the last wonders as the garden settles gracefully into sleep
DECEMBER is a quiet time in the garden which is a pleasant contrast to the hustle and bustle of the Christmas run-up.
Many trees and shrubs have shed their leaves and there are fewer flowers to appreciate but it is this sense of the garden going to sleep for winter that has a calming effect.
Walking around I see the beautiful wispy gossamer seeds of old man’s beard or Clematis vitalba. This native clematis can run a bit wild – I saw it recently covering a large tree so perfectly it looked like the tree itself was flowering. So that will need digging up this weekend.
There are some better-behaved evergreen winter flowering clematis such as ‘Jingle Bells’ with lovely creamy bell shaped flowers and a delicate winter scent.
‘Freckles’ is another pretty one with large creamy scented flowers spotted or freckled inside with red.
Being evergreen it’s a useful plant for all year screening – perfect for trellises and pergolas. It doesn’t need much pruning – just clip to keep it tame– and grow in a warm sheltered spot in fertile well drained soil and in sun or light shade.
The Mahonia is also in bloom, the showy lemon stalks of flower emitting a delicate fragrance.
It’s a great choice for winter interest with handsome evergreen hollylike foliage and provides a valuable source of nectar late in the year.
Grow this in sun or partial shade in fertile, moist well-drained soil.
I also like ‘Soft Caress’ which has finer foliage without any thorns and ‘Cabaret,’ a more recent variety which is quite compact and therefore suitable for smaller gardens.
It has beautiful orange red buds which open to yellow flowers.
Fatsia japonica looks at its best this time of year. It’s usually grown for its tropical looking glossy palmate foliage and is a handy shrub for shade.
In early winter it sends up clusters of white flowers, arranged like small globes on a white stemmed candelabra. These can look amazing if dried and sprayed silver or gold for indoor decorations. There’s a lovely rich violet-purple in the undergrowth. Liriope muscari, blue lily-turf, is a low growing perennial.
It’s evergreen with arching dark green leaves and in winter throws up spikes of small shiny indigo flowers.
It likes partial or full shade and makes a good ground cover. However it’s a vigorous spreader – so if you only want a few, confine it to pots.
A few roses still bear some fragile flowers. I love roses anyway but these last blooms are the most precious, cut for indoors and appreciated all the more for their rarity. A good enough reason to grow roses, I think.
And there are hints of what lies ahead… the Acacia dealbata has many buds at the end of its branches, promising a delightful show of pompom yellow flowers in early February.
And the rhododendron buds are plump, perhaps just a bit too attractive for local squirrels. ‘Christmas Cheer’ won’t flower until late February or early March despite its name but is one of the earliest rhodos to do so. It used to be forced in greenhouses to bloom in time for Christmas. It’s a medium sized evergreen with delicate trusses of pink blooms that fade to white and like all rhodos, it prefers the soil acid, humus rich and moist but well drained.
Dappled shade in a sheltered position is ideal. As this is a relatively compact cultivar, it would also be suitable for a pot in ericaceous compost.
A robin hops impatiently – he’s waiting for me to start digging and unearth some worms and grubs – time to garden…