Fill your garden with a winter tapestry of textures and scents

Discover how to make your garden look beautiful all winter long, with plantsman John Massey’s expert advice

Cheery flowers, delicious fragrance and striking foliage are just the things to lift the spirits on a gloomy winter’s day

It’s tempting to abandon the garden at this time of year and resign yourself to it looking drab and dreary for a few months while you pine for spring. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s easy to inject a little winter magic into a garden of any size. Cheery flowers, delicious fragrance and striking foliage are just the things to lift the spirits on a gloomy winter’s day.

Start by looking out of your windows, as that’s how you most often view the garden at this time of year. Treat each window as a picture frame and consider how you can make that view more attractive. Rather than just sticking one winter-flowering plant in the frame, try to create a group of plants that will look good together. For example, lift the canopy of a tree (see p68), so you can fit a witch hazel below, then underplant with snowdrops.

In a small garden, you can make a big impact with containers. Plant up a few pots to look good at different times throughout the year. Tuck them out of the way during their ‘off seasons’ and bring them into your picture frames when they’re ready to shine. You can even embellish them with seedheads cut from around the garden, such as dried hydrangeas, poppies and eryngiums.

In a larger garden, I like to create different areas that each have their own ‘wow time’ –

Look out of your windows – treat them as picture frames and consider how you can make the view more attractive

concentrate your winter plants in one area for maximum impact, but also let them spill out into others.

In gardens of all sizes, grow something with winter scent close to your back door to draw you outside, even in the least tempting of months. Ornamental grasses, conifers and evergreen ferns are your friends for an easy winter garden. Grasses such as miscanthus and pennisetum will hold their shape through winter. Waiting until spring to cut them back also helps to protect more tender species from the worst of the weather. Plants with ornamental seedheads, such as teasels, can be staked to keep them upright for longer.

Leave hydrangea flowers in place so you can enjoy them over winter. This also helps to protect the growth buds lower down the stems from frost. By pruning hydrangeas in spring rather than winter, you’ll encourage them to flower later in the year, so the blooms will last better next winter.

Make sure you have a good balance of deciduous and evergreen plants. Position evergreens behind deciduous trees and shrubs, so that when their leaves have fallen the evergreens are revealed behind. It also helps to prune foreground shrubs and trees, either by lifting the crown or thinning out the branches, so you can see through them easily. Clip your evergreens into neat shapes in September and they’ll add structure and form to your garden all winter long.

You can visit John’s garden on selected Saturdays from 10am to dusk, weatherpermitting, entry £6.50. For more details see ashwoodnurseries.com

Ornamental grasses, conifers and evergreen ferns are your friends for an easy winter garden

Evergreens come into their own in winter, providing valuable structure and an array of verdant hues

John Massey’s garden at Ashwood Nurseries offers a winter tapestry of colours, shapes, textures and scents Feathery, billowing grasses such as miscanthus bring movement to borders long into winter

Bright white hellebores light up shady corners, bravely defying the harshest weather Choose border plants with sturdy architectural seedheads, such as this eryngium Evergreen Viburnum tinus ‘Eve Price’ contrasts with fierystemmed dogwoods and dried teasels

Upright plumes of Cortaderia selloana ‘Pumila’ catch the sun, above a fountain of frost-laced foliage Cyclamen coum combines rounded silvery leaves with a succession of cheery, snow-defying blooms Leave hydrangea flowers in place and they’ll dry to papery shades of dusky brown