Naomi Slade is bringing winter scent indoors
Smell of Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’ is a December miracle!
enjoy the challenge of this season’s gardening, and winter-flowering plants have a particular appeal. The individual blooms may not be big. Indeed, with a few exceptions such as rhododendron ‘Christmas Cheer’ and the odd early-rising camellia, they tend to be small and pale.
Yet to my mind, a garden isn’t a garden without a few sarcococca, preferably a Chimonanthus praecox and, if space, mahonia, which has a smell that takes me straight back to childhood. And scent is the striking thing: all these flowers pack a powerful pong!
So it may be Christmas, but as well as decking the halls with boughs of holly, I’ve been sneaking into the garden to forage little posies. Clearly what there is to cut depends on the current depth of winter – I’m lucky to still have the cheerful little daisies of feverfew and a few brave roses; and there’s evergreen foliage from purple or variegated silver-green pittosporum.
T wigs can provide a lot of interest and add a leggy quality to an arrangement.
Cornus alba ‘Baton Rouge’ is proving its worth, although it’s young so I can’t cut too much, and amelanchier has shapely twigs with elegantly pointed buds.
But a real trouper at this point in proceedings is Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’, which thrives in the front garden, and acts both as a light screen from foot traffic and a handy source of cutting material.
Clusters of carmine buds open into little pinky flowers that are produced on and off for months. It’s tolerant of soil, aspect and light levels and it doesn’t grow too big, reaching a couple of metres or so if left to its own devices. And if it does exceed its allotted space, then it submits to being pruned without argument. A cracking small garden plant, in fact!
But, for me, the perfume is the thing. A couple of small sprigs of blossom are now scenting the whole kitchen. The spectacle is pretty rather than dramatic: a minute posy in a glass jar. But the fragrance magical and slightly implausible; a December miracle that transcends winter and heralds the spring to come.