Barking beauties
Winter colour in raw
YOUR garden will have readymade seasonal sparkle if you have trees and shrubs with colourful bark.
Red, silver and white make for an eye-catching winter scheme. A star performer is the beautiful silver birch, especially when planted in a spot where it will catch the setting sun.
The variety Jacquemontii is ideal for small gardens. Pruning the lower branches as the plant matures will reveal more of its silvery white trunk.
The silvery canes of Rubus cockburnianus also make a bold statement in the winter garden when contrasted against dark evergreens or among spring-flowering hellebores.
The fiery stems of Cornus Winter Flame will set your garden aglow now the autumn leaves have disappeared. For the most intense colour, prune them hard in spring.
Mix the crimson stems with the golden shoots of Cornus Flaviramea in a sun-lit spot and preferably by a shimmering pond for best effect.
The willowy, coloured wands of salix can also be used this way.
Shiny
Use them at the back of borders where their height can be appreciated and used as a foil for smaller flowering shrubs in spring and summer.
The scarlet willow Salix Britzensis looks especially stunning against a conifer hedge with a carpet of snowdrops emerging beneath.
And the canes and evergreen foliage of bamboo rustle in the wind, bringing music to the garden.
Even the most reluctant gardener swoons over blossom trees in spring. If carefully selected, you can have visitors bowled over by their awesome sight all year round.
The Sheraton cherry, Prunus serrulata, which has masses of small white flowers in May, is noted for its shiny, peeling, mahogany-red bark, which can be stripped off in autumn to reveal glossy layers underneath.
One of the finest maples is Acer griseum, the paperbark maple, which has cinnamon-coloured peeling bark. Plant it so the light will shine through the papery film.
Hers’s maple tree, with bumpy bark, has green and white stripes and is another winter wonder.