Scented winter flowers
Make spring come early by growing these early budders and bloomers, Kerry Carman writes.
Do you like to make spring arrive early? I have spent years collecting early budders and bloomers that are not really ‘‘early’’ as their true flowering time is winter. They provide colour, shapely forms, flurries of flowers and fragrance in an otherwise dull season.
It is possible to create a display of form, colour and enticing fragrances to delight all the senses by careful study of what looks good at this time of year and bringing much of it together. Such grand plans are best suited to the bed or border but – by careful selection – it is equally achievable in a collection of containers.
Most of my recommended shrubs and trees are deciduous so a dark evergreen backdrop is key. I find the sasanqua forms of camellia, which remain unaffected by petal blight, are ideal. Look for the smaller flowered ‘Cinnamon Cindy’, ‘Fairy Blush’ and ‘Tiny Princess’.
Sparkling white and rose-pink are the chosen colours. Early blooming magnolias such as Magnolia stellata, Magnolia denudata and its child ‘Forrest’s Pink’ are joined by the two small trees that are called plum blossom in the Orient.
They are really flowering apricots Prunus mume ‘The Geisha’ (deep rose) and its bridal white version ‘Alboplena’.
Not only do they display their pristine petals from rugged branches but they are also deliciously fragrant. If carefully pruned, their gnarled forms can make picturesque specimens in old age as they are very long lived. Prune young branches back to 15cm after the first year’s growth and then down to halfway every year after flowering.
The Taiwan cherry, Prunus campanulata, carries the blossom theme through to spring, its nectar-filled sprays of rosy bloom delighting winter-hungry birds, particularly tu¯ ı¯ and bellbirds.
Then add scented shrubs. The essentials are waxen-belled wintersweet Chimonanthus praecox – the best cultivar is ‘Luteus’, and the winterflowering virburnums, Viburnum farreri and Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’. The latter rarely undresses completely for winter, the remaining dark chocolate foliage providing an attractive background for the sweetly scented icing-sugar flowers, clusters of which develop from pearly pink buds. The dwarf form ‘Nanum’ sounds useful but mine never flowered despite liberal applications of