Enjoy fragrant shrubs & trees
Awinter-flowering shrub, or small tree, can really lift a garden so find a good specimen now, while it’s in flower. Buy the largest you can afford, because winterflowering plants tend to be slow-growing and therefore pricey. Keep it in a mild place, against the house, until spring. Don’t plant it until the worst of the weather is over. One of the most desirable is Daphne bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’, a columnar evergreen with waxy, fragrant pink flowers in January. In cold gardens this evergreen sheds its foliage. Like many daphnes it has a capricious tendency to die for no apparent reason, although mine have lived for almost 15 years. Daphne laureola is a much tougher native evergreen that lives far longer and thrives in considerable shade. Its glossy green foliage and apple-green flowers look very handsome in winter light but the black berries produce seedlings, so this is one for a wilder setting.
Many winter-flowering shrubs are Himalayan or Chinese, prompted to flower earlier by our warmer climate. They need deep, fertile soil and a bright position, away from frost pockets. Witch hazels (hamamelis) produce weatherresistant spidery balls of flower on bare branches, in marmalade shades of gold, orange and red. Fragrance varies, but lemon-yellow H. intermedia ‘Pallida’ smells of freesias and stands out well in winter light, while ‘Barmstedt Gold’ produces lots of spicily scented, mid-yellow flowers held in contrasting red calices. They make branching, open shrubs and can be lightly pruned. Their Japanese relative, Corylopsis pauciflora (winter hazel), has downwardfacing pale yellow flowers about 5cm (2in) apart on bare branches. Corylopsis, with heavier racemes of flowers, needs acid soil or a container of ericaceous compost. Sarcococcas (Christmas box) are smaller plants with tiny flowers consisting of clusters of stamens. The most highly scented is S. hookeriana digyna, with white stamens tinted pink. Elegant S. confusa has glossy green foliage and ivory-white flowers. Even foot-high plants exude a powerful, lily-like fragrance. The next three plants form large shrubs that are untidy in summer, so they need careful placing. The most pervading scent belongs to winter sweet, Chimonanthus praecox. Its translucent, pale yellow flowers, each with a tomato-red eye, cling to bare branches. Shrubby, non-climbing Lonicera purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’ also flowers in winter and its cream-white blooms are easily accessible to honey- and bumblebees. Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’ f lowers in f lushes from November to March, whenever the weather warms up. Grow it on a garden edge so its hyacinth scent will really carry. If it’s a tree you’re after, autumnflowering cherry, Prunus subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’, produces flushes of small, pale pink flowers, although this pollution-tolerant tree needs a warm site to thrive. In a colder garden, go for prunus ‘Kursar’, whose downward facing buds show touches of pink from February, before flowering in early spring. Japanese apricot, Prunus mume ‘Beni-chidori’ produces tiny dusky-pink flowers on almost-black branches, giving rise to its common name ‘flight of red cranes’. Any of these frost-hardy beauties will lift the spirits in winter – creating a lovely excuse to step outside.
They need deep, fertile soil and a bright position, away from frost pockets