Welcome

Winter offers an excellent opportunity to take stock of the garden. Once herbaceous perennials have retreated underground, it’s the turn of the evergreens to shine. These might be colourful shrubs such as lavender, small conifers, grasses, leafy groundcover or woody perennials – all of them are enormously useful for rallying borders right now. This issue we’ve assembled this valiant entourage into a celebration of evergreens (p16). From the jaunty gold of abies ‘Golden Spreader’ to the dashing reds of Nandina domestica, the colour spectrum in winter can shout as loud as any midsummer day. Green-blue fescues and silvery stachys bring a sophisticated note to groundcover, ideal for planting with black ophiopogon and swirling sedges. This month’s reader gardens (from p48) have lots of stunning topiary ideas to copy too, and pretty little winter flowers to help colonise bare soil. Of course, not all plants are as lovable. For some years now I’ve ‘enjoyed’ the company of a hulking great Viburnum tinus in my back garden – planted before I realised those pretty white winter flowers smell awful! My plans to cloud-prune it have been scuppered by the local pigeons, which have decided to nest in it. On p114 our new columnist Pam Richardson shares her own ‘little black book’ of annoying plants; if you have one you can’t abide, why not write in and tell us about it?!