LOVE YOUR GARDEN IN WINTER Keep it looking its best
Who says you can’t enjoy your garden when the temperature drops? As some plants fade from the limelight, others step up and get their razzle dazzle on...
It’s the season of smoky bonfires, glittering fireworks and a general go-slow in the garden. There’s still plenty to delight the eye and lift the spirits though. Cheerful carnival colours of classic winter bedding, such as pansies and violas, will light up the darkest corners, while those decorative autumn/winter workhorses, ornamental grasses and seedheads, add texture and scale and look especially ravishing twinkling in the pale morning light covered in an icing-sugar dusting of hoar frost.
SAVOUR THOSE SEEDHEADS
Some plants offer up a second helping of gorgeousness long after they’ve flowered. Attractive seedheads add interest in autumn and winter and provide food and shelter for wildlife.
As a further bonus, they also look great in dried flower arrangements. Favourites include:
Alliums These spectacular blooms are easy to grow and there’s a wonderful variety to choose from, with flower forms ranging from football-sized spheres of iridescent purple (Allium giganteum, A. ‘Purple Giant’ and A. ‘Globemaster’) to the green and ruby bobbles of A. sphaerocephalon. Moreover, they hold their form as they fade and the seedheads look particularly glorious. Cut off a few stems to bring inside too.
Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena) With its romantic sky blue prettiness, this easy-to-grow, low-maintenance flower is a feature of many a cottage garden. As the season changes, the lime green frondy seedheads fade to a neutral chalky grey.
Common poppy (Papaver rhoeas) The RHS recommends letting young children rattle poppy seedheads as a way (one of many) to encourage an early interest in gardening.
Other distinctive seedheads include:
Sedums, teasels, heleniums, Echinops ritro ‘Veitch’s Blue’, and the classic silver papery pennies of honesty.
If you’ve none of the above actually growing in your garden, beg, borrow or buy tall stems of dried seedheads – they can look stunning in an olive jar planter or terracotta urn as a focal point on a winter lawn, or to disguise a bare corner.
KEEP COLOUR COMING
Violas, pansies, heathers, hellebores and cyclamen are just a few of the easy-care seasonal stars readily available now. They will tolerate cold and wet conditions and light up the garden.
Sweet-faced violas may look small and delicate but they’re deceptively hardy and capable of putting on a show from autumn through to spring. The Sorbet series is particularly pretty: ‘Sorbet Peach Frost’ (white, yellow and light purple); ‘Sorbet Coconut Duet’ (bicoloured white and purple flowers with a yellow centre); and ‘Sorbet Marina’ (blue-grey flowers with a large white centre).
For a bit of height and colour, there’s Algerian winter iris (Iris unguicularis), which has lilac flowers from October to March; plus clematis varieties: Clematis cirrhosa (cream flowers); and Clematis cirrhosa var balearica (cream spotted red/maroon blooms), which should flower from November right through to March.
GO FOR VEG
With careful planning, you can continue to eat a wide range of home-grown vegetables, salads and herbs up until spring. Leafy veg Plug plants of perpetual spinach and red-stemmed
chard can be planted outdoors or undercover now for winter picking. Protect them with a cloche in very cold weather.
Brassicas are the stalwarts of the garden through autumn and winter. Summer-sown cavolo nero and other kales remain productive as long as you pick the leaves regularly, while Brussels sprouts, or their tasty relatives the flower sprouts, planted in May are ready for harvesting from November to February.
BOX CLEVER
There’s little more uplifting than a vibrant arrangement. Keep window boxes going all year round by planting a bold evergreen such as box or pine as a foundation, then add complementary seasonal planting.
Ruby red skimmia looks great at this time of year paired with dwarf pine or dwarf conifer and white heather. Or, for a striking pink/ maroon colour combo, go for those classic seasonal show-offs, ornamental cabbages – they’re weatherproof, retain their colour and need little TLC, apart from the occasional removal of outer leaves.
SAY YES TO SUCCULENTS
Not just for indoors, they bring a touch of Mediterranean pizzazz to autumn/winter gardens, balconies and patios.
Aloe aristata can tolerate a drop in temperature and produces flowers in autumn. Cold-tolerant Graptopetalum pentandrum subsp Superbum produces glorious panicles of flowers.
Agave ‘Kissho Kan’ is attractive and can withstand the cold, while Aeonium ‘Blushing Beauty’ has rosettes of red-tinged leaves. Crassula ovata ‘Gollum’, a popular cultivar of the jade tree, is easy to grow and shade tolerant.
Sempervivum ‘Gold Nugget’ is a new variety (from Thomson & Morgan); lime green foliage transforms to vibrant orange in winter.
While succulents can look fabulous in rockeries or gravel gardens, if you grow them in containers you can move them indoors if a severe frost is forecast. They’ll also need protection from winter wet, so may be better suited to a covered area.
ADD SHOWPIECE SHRUBS
As autumn draws to a close, shrubs that really come into their own for seasonal colour and hardiness include Skimmia japonica ‘Rubella’, with its dark green leaves and maroon flower buds, and Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’, the fantastic winter-flowering arrowwood shrub, has densely packed clusters of rose, pink or blush-white, fragrant blooms.
IMPROVE THE VIEW
At this time of year, outdoor lighting, from tealights, candles and lanterns, to festoon lights, solar lamps, spots and lighting strips, means you can make the most of the garden in the evenings. Also, consider what you can tweak to improve the composition of the garden – think about relocating anything attractive that’s moveable, such as pot displays, so they can be clearly seen from the windows. Or remove a few of the lower branches of a tree to reveal a view of something eyecatching. It’s amazing what a bit of seasonal rearranging can do.