IN CELEBRATION OF WINTER PLANTS
Seed heads of wild plants have a unique loveliness in the cold months. Susie White celebrates their frosted delicacy and shows how you can bring their magic into your garden
Seed heads have a delicate frosty beauty in the cold months, says Susie White.
I’ve walked this riverside path in all weathers, enjoying its plants and wildlife through different seasons. The verges, made frothy in summer by exuberant ox-eye daisies, became muted and sepia with autumn. Now, on this cold winter’s day, they are transformed by frost. Shards of ice delineate every stem, pick out the tracery of spider’s webs, sparkle on the swirling shapes of frozen puddles. The seed heads of grasses and wildflowers, packed with food for birds and animals, are revealed as things of great beauty.
Each umbel of hogweed is a wheel of spokes edged in white. Grass heads arch gracefully, curving under their extra weight. The needle-fine pods of sweet rocket are back-lit, and the flat lid of a poppy seed head resembles a cathedral’s rose window. A flurry of goldfinches clusters on the stately teasels that thrive in the gravel (left). Every plant has taken on a new dimension, grown in size under hoar frost as moist river air fell on cold ground producing intricate patterns.
If you get out early on a crisp cold morning, these delights can be seen along hedgerows and field edges, on waste ground or beside pools and rivers. Seeds are rich in protein and fats and are a vital winter food store for mice and voles, squirrels and birds. Birds that eat insects in summer widen their diet in winter; dunnocks supplement with nettle seeds and wrens look for alternative energy sources when their normal diet of tiny creatures isn’t available. Seeds vary enormously in size, from the plump black seeds of borage to the ‘dust’ produced by orchids and dispersed by the wind.
CULTIVATING FOR WILDLIFE
Winter seed heads look as spectacular in the garden as they do in wild places, and can be just as beneficial to wildlife, attracting hungry birds. My own garden is a mix of the wild and the cultivated, with plants chosen for their benefit to wildlife as well as their beauty. This mix becomes a link between garden and landscape.
A wildlife garden doesn’t need to be an untidy one. Mine has an underlying formality of straight paths and topiary but the borders are fluid in style. Every plant is chosen for supplies of nectar or pollen, foliage for moth and butterfly larvae to feed on, or for its abundance of seed. Native plants self-seed freely so you need to be able
to recognise them at seedling stage. I move plants around the garden and edit as I visualise how they will grow and combine. Some can be overabundant seeders so you need to get the right balance. For example, wild marjoram or field scabious are often best left to grow among the long grass of a perennial meadow where they can spread without becoming overdominant.
WINTER SAFETY NETS
Wide margins in farmland provide cover and food for a variety of birds and small mammals. Bullfinches extract the little oval seeds from nettles and goldfinches flock among thistles. For the garden, there are more elegant thistle alternatives, such as cardoon, artichoke and the pretty burgundy flowers of the plume thistle, Cirsium rivulare.
Sunflower heads are smorgasbords of high-energy food for sparrows, finches and nuthatches. Children not only enjoy growing sunflowers, measuring their height and marvelling at their huge flowers, but they can see their direct relationship with wildlife. By providing a feast of seeds in our gardens, birds feed in a wider area giving them greater safety than congregating at a feeder.
When winter comes, I am pragmatic about how much to cut back. Hardy geraniums, lady’s mantle and annuals collapse, becoming soggy and heavy if left until spring. These are composted or chopped up in situ to make a protective mulch. Any plant that has a strong architectural presence in winter is left standing, even being propped up just as they might be when flowering. Many are supple or strong enough to stand up to winter gales: wild carrot with its curled cups, prickly viper’s bugloss and, surprisingly, the thin pale moons of honesty. The once-widespread practice of ‘getting the garden ready for winter’ by levelling everything to the ground left no hiding places for wildlife.
Frost picks out the perfect and minute details; the hairy stems of
Verbena bonariensis become many tiny points of light. Leaving the plant standing allows it to self-seed but it also protects this native of South America. Insects such as ladybirds and lacewings find shelter in the crevices of plants, in hollow stems or between stem and leaf.
Grasses woven throughout the borders in a countryside garden establish another link with the landscape, echoing the winter colour of the surrounding fields. Golden oat grass, Stipa gigantea, creates fountains of tall stems topped with shimmering seed cases when lit up by the low sun. The feather reed-grass,
Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, runs in a waving ochre band through the perennials and lasts until the early spring cut-down. This is when I trim deciduous grasses to the ground, and it’s the time of year when they can be divided and increased. Leaving it until spring protects the crowns. Use gloves to tease the dead leaves out of golden oat grass’ tufty clumps. I always watch out for hedgehogs when I do this as the thick tussock makes a perfect thatched house for them.
In the garden, fields and hedgerows, seed heads have a stark winter beauty, made magical on a frosty morning. Plant skeletons provide wonderful inspiration for artists. Their contrasting shapes and textures brought indoors are stunning natural sculptures to lift your spirits.