Winter in miniature
Add instant winter cheer to your plot by planting colourful pots of every size. Monty reveals his favourite plants and successful combinations for colour through to spring
Monty shares his ideas for containers full of colour to brighten your plot in winter
Iwrite this with the rain pouring from the sky, so I cannot see more than 50 yards from my window. What leaves remain are guttering off the trees, and the borders can do nothing but cower bedraggled beneath the onslaught. Welcome to the reality of a Longmeadow winter! The dream of blue skies and crisp frost-rimed days is mostly just that – a dream, rarely made real more than a precious few days a year. But you cannot give in. That way madness lies. You have to challenge winter weather to a fight and get back up with a dismissive laugh every time it knocks you down. There are a number of weapons in this battle. The first is to have lots of evergreen structure that wind and rain cannot reduce. The second is shrubs and trees with good bark and shape, and to prune wisely to make the most of them. The third – and most accessible to any gardener
The male fern is terrifc as the centrepiece for a large pot, looking really good all winter until about March
anywhere – is to plant up lots of pots specifically to be at their best in these drear winter months. There are many tr ied- and- tested permutations, but I always like to include spring bulbs, some ‘fringe planting’ and a centrepiece that, because of the season, is often a woody shrub of some sort.
A fondness for ferns
A very successful exception to that woody rule has been the use of ferns. I have fallen in love with ferns of all kinds over the past few years, but the male fern ( Dryopteris filix-mas) is perhaps the most completely satisfying, given its ability to grow almost anywhere other than in burning-bright sunlight. It is terrific as the centrepiece for a large pot, looking really good all winter until about March, when it’s best to cut the old fronds right back and let new ones emerge freely. It takes a few years to develop into its full size but, once it does, a large plant can hold its own anywhere. I have underplanted the male fern with ivy – four or five plants trailing down the sides of the pot that will become a green curtain – and poked through the ivy strands either pink or white Cyclamen coum ( but never together, otherwise the whole thing ends up looking like a strawberry Mivvi). Beneath al l that, planted a good 20cm down on a base of very gritty compost, I have had ‘Tête-àtête’ daffodils ( because bigger varieties would look out of place among all this relatively droopy greenery) and the tulip ‘Spring Green’ to bring a final burst of freshness at the end of the pot’s season. I have used the same combination of understorey, but replaced the centrepiece fern with, variously, Mahonia x media ‘ Winter Sun’, witch hazel ( Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Pallida’) and red-stemmed Siberian dogwood ( Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’). These all gave us a tal ler and more structural display than the fern, which works especially well in January and February, when the flowers of the mahonia and witch hazel and the bark of the dogwood are at their most intense.
Small is beautiful
But you don’t need big, expensive pots to fill your midwinter garden with colour. Small containers, ranging from those roomy enough for a dozen small bulbs to a tiny one holding just a single snowdrop, look great both singly and in groups. I increasingly use terracotta alpine pans for bulbs and keep them in a cold frame, open at the sides but covered on top to protect them from waterlogging. I bring them into the greenhouse in relays to stir them into f lower, from the end of January through to mid-March. My favourite of the early bulbs are i rises, particularly the reticulata, histrioides and danfordiae species, although my appreciation of them is only recent. One reason for this is these early irises are all essentially alpine plants that
Violas have small flowers on compact plants, but remain upright and unaffected by most weather
only thrive in very sharp drainage and full sun – so they have little chance in Longmeadow’s heavy soil, making them ideal for mollycoddling in a container. I plant them in compost made up of equal parts of pott ing compost and horticultural grit. Once the buds are an inch or so above the surface, I bring them into the greenhouse to open, then place them either on a table near the house, so they can be enjoyed from a window, or on a cool windowsill indoors. The key is to shelter them from too much rain and keep them cool, so they last as long as possible.
Iris, pansies and violas
Iris danfordiae is bright yellow and one of the first to f lower in mid-January. It is compact, so looks best in a shallow alpine pan. The bulbs are not expensive and tend to flower less well after the first year, so it is a good idea to buy fresh ones each year for the best display. Iris reticulata flowers on short stems and looks like an especially glamorous crocus. I have the variety ‘Harmony’, which has particularly deep-blue flowers with a gold blaze on the lower ‘fall’. Its leaves remain quite stubby during f lowering, but then grow taller to reach 30cm or more at maturity. ‘J.S. Dijt’ has rich reddish-purple f lowers that open rather later, but is another superb choice. Iris histrioides is a member of the reticulata group. While the cultivar ‘George’ is especially magnificent, with rich plumpurple flowers that are rather larger than most others in this group, ‘Lady Beatrix Stanley’ has lovely blue flowers, with a yellow marking in the centre of the petals, carried on a short stem. All cultivars of Iris histrioides flower strongly year after year and should ideally be planted as bulbs from mid-November. If planted in December, they would probably flower, but a lot later. There is something refined and even a bit highfalutin about these jewel- like irises, but for long-lasting winter colour it is hard to beat the cheerful display of winter- flowering pansies and violas. Pansies have larger f lowers, but are more prone to weather damage, especial ly heavy rain, which makes the big petals flop and hang sadly. Violas have small f lowers on more compact plants, but remain upright and unaffected by most weather. I grow both, but try to give pansies a bit more shelter. Both come in a huge range of colours, from pale yellows and pinks to wonderful rich reds and purples, and will f lower bravely through the very worst of winter weather. The largest blooms are found in the Bingo, Delta and Imperial series, the Ultima series has medium-sized f lowers in a range of colours, and the widest span of single colours is in the Universal series. All are cheap, readily available and an absolute delight. Pansies f lower best in cool, damp conditions in light or dappled shade, but are
robust enough to endure all but the very harshest conditions. Unlike violas or violets, they will thrive in full sun as long as they are never allowed to dry out. But they should never sit in wet soil either, so make sure that they have good drainage. Leafmould makes the perfect open compost for pots, but any loose, light growing medium suits them. Hellebores make excellent pot plants and give their best display in the winter months. The Oriental hybrids are the most common, starting to perform from February onwards. For earlier colour, go for the stinking hellebore ( Helleborus foetidus), with its red-rimmed, apple-green flowers that look as though they’ve been dipped in blood; or the fragrant hellebore ( H. odorus), which has plain green flowers. The Christmas rose ( H. niger) has many hybrids and will flower from the end of the year, while looking very handsome in a good pot even when only in leaf. Like most hellebores, it likes a cool position in partial shade and rich compost that is not allowed to dry out. Last but absolutely essential are the various primulas that start to flower as soon as the sun breaks through in the new year. I grow gold- and silver-laced polyanthus and am beguiled by some of the richer, single colours such as ‘Ramona’ (which we plant in the Jewel Garden, as well as grow in pots). But my heart is irretrievably given to the simple, unmodified native primrose, Primula vulgaris. I grow this not only all through the coppice but also in dozens of little pots, filled with plants dug up from the garden, forcing them into f lower in the greenhouse to steal time on the spring season yet to come.
Absolutely essential are the various primulas that start to flower as soon as the sun breaks in the new year