There’s more going on in your plot than you imagine
Although December is dark and cold, there are often lovely sunny days when I find that the garden beckons. The appeal of the winter garden is subtle, relying on the structure of trees and shrubs, both evergreen and deciduous, to create a framework filled by the faded flower heads of grasses and herbaceous perennials. Add to this a heavy dew or sparkling frost, and low, winter sunlight, and you suddenly have a magical scene just outside your window.
The nodding, white flowers of the Christmas rose (Helleborus niger) are one of the few December blooms, but I prefer to focus on scented plants at this time of year, as their perfume hangs heavy on still days, encouraging you to go out and search for its source. My two favourite scented shrubs for December are winter-flowering honeysuckle Lonicera fragrantissima and sweet box Sarcococca hookeriana, neither of which are going to win any prizes for their looks, but will both fill the garden with scent from their small winter flowers.
If it’s colour that you’re after, then the berries of shrubs such as Callicarpa, Pyracantha, Cotoneaster and Skimmia are hard to beat at this time of year, and make a welcome source of food for birds. Gardens are a valuable resource for our struggling wildlife, so it seems to make sense for us all to do as much as we can to support the creatures that inhabit and visit our plots. Providing food for birds is one straightforward way to help, even if it’s just leaving out some of this year’s bumper apple crop for
Leave out water too, especially when other sources will be frozen
blackbirds, thrushes, redwings and fieldfares to fight over. Leave out water too, especially when other sources will be frozen.
Shelter is also easy to provide, simply by leaving the faded leaves on herbaceous plants to provide cover in your borders, and some piles of fallen leaves at the base of hedges. Avoid cutting back ivy and other dense climbing plants now, because they make a wonderful winter home for small birds and many invertebrates. Don’t pull out hedges and replace them with fences, because nothing can shelter or nest in a fence, and they make it harder for animals like hedgehogs to move between gardens to find the food they need.
There may be more going on in your plot than you imagine this month, and getting a few jobs done out in the fresh air avoids the festive mayhem for an hour or two, as well as helping to burn off a few of those mince pies! n