They gladden our hearts
It was in the 16th century that English gardeners began using winterperforming plants in concert to defy the season’s bleakness. Gardens so planted, wrote John Gerard in 1597, ‘do singularly delight, when in them a man doth behold a flourishing shew of sommer beauties in the middest of winters force, and a goodly spring of flowers, when abroad a leafe is not to be seene.’ A little later, Francis Bacon likewise urged would-be makers of fine gardens to plant for winter, ‘that you may have ver perpetuum’ or everlasting spring.
For the first Elizabethans, this approach was inspired and enabled by the increasing availability of suitable plants. By the last winters of Gloriana’s reign, the best of their gardens boasted evergreens such as holly, ivy, bay laurel, juniper, yew, box, Phillyrea and rosemary; the precocious blooms of Daphne mezereum, Cornus mas and almond; carpets of periwinkle, primrose and sweet violets; clumps of hellebores and hepaticas; flurries of snowdrops and snowflakes; and a gilding of crocuses and early daffodils.
For us, second Elizabethans, the repertoire has again expanded, and vastly. In the past six decades, our gardens have become home to more than 1,000 more varieties of snowdrop than the one that Gerard grew. Hellebores similarly are now available in dazzling diversity. For their foils, we have the incandescent wands of willows and dogwoods, the gold, russet and garnet of coldnipped conifers and the brilliance of variegated broad-leaved evergreens. For their backdrop, there are ghostly Himalayan birches, cheering Japanese cherries, opulent camellias and walls clad with Abeliophyllum distichum and Clematis cirrhosa.
Pervading all is that purest of pleasures: scent on the freezing air, cast by daphnes, viburnums, wintersweet, Sarcococca, Prunus mume and Mahonia japonica. these are just some of the hiemal delights that our gardens now afford.
Our climate is what makes this possible. Even at their hardest, British winters are comparatively warm and wet. Plants that would perish in colder regions flourish with us. Plants from colder regions flower earlier for us. In the UK, these two categories can be combined and coordinated to a degree that’s feasible nowhere else in the world.
this achievement is not really about gainsaying Nature with non-native plants. It is, rather, a glorious elaboration of the solace that Britons have sought since ancient times in our wild evergreens and brave early budders and bloomers: the reassurance that life continues despite the drear.
Our best schemes still contain numerous native plants, draw inspiration from the landscape, from wildwood, hedgerow and willowbank, and make needy wildlife welcome. It is one of the English garden’s greatest distinctions and gladdest gifts, this transcendent winter beauty. Let’s rejoice in it while it lasts.
Daphnes, viburnums, wintersweet–just some of the hiemal delights our gardens afford