Making plans for a winter garden

Ruth makes plans for creating a bright winter garden

IT only seems like days ago that we were belatedly planting our summer bedding and sowing our annual seeds to brighten the gardens over the summer. Now they are reaching the end of their span and it’s time to look ahead and think about brightening up the so-called‚ ‘dark’ winter and early year months.

I say ‘so-called’ because these months can be rich with colour and interest if you plan ahead and start getting your garden ready now.

Winter bedding, also called spring bedding, should be planted now or sown for the earliest flowering next year.

Pansies, violas, bellis daisies, primrose, polyanthus and wallflowers should be planted now, and the garden centres and online retailers are also selling their packs of winter and spring-flowering bulbs.

Combine the two to ensure a succession of colour, from early snowdrops and aconites in January, leading into a resurgence in autumn-planted pansies and primroses as the temperatures start to rise, through to the first purple pop of alliums that herald the onset of the summer months.

You can combine them with some beautiful foliage plants, too. Heucheras come in a range of colours, from deep purple to autumnal reds and golds, while many evergreen grasses provide interest right through the year and look wonderful when covered with a coating of frost on the coldest mornings. There are some wonderful early flowering herbaceous perennials to get out now. I am adding two small hellebores to my borders. They used to live in a large container underneath a standard ceanothus, but since vine weevils killed it off they have been living in temporary plastic pots on the patio and are crying out for their ‘forever home’.

I’m putting them in a lightly shaded area under a tree and enriching the soil with homemade compost. With any luck they will start flowering in late winter – hence their common name of Christmas or Lenten rose

Also take a look at what’s happening in the garden now and see if there is anything you can do – or leave undone – to make winter more interesting.

Last chance for sowing spring bedding Whether you plant it in containers or borders, spring bedding will brighten the garden through winter An added benefit of spring bedding is that it provides essential nectar for the earliest bumblebees and butterflies emerging from hibernation.

Plant now for colour in autumn and spring