Solace in Winter
Despite the cold, the Winter Garden at Cambridge University Botanic Garden offers a warm welcome. Juliet Roberts finds out more
Juliet Roberts visits a garden full of winter cheer
WINTER isn’t generally the best time for garden visiting, yet around the country there are an increasing number of gardens that have been designed to look their best from the end of October through to early spring. The Winter Garden, at Cambridge University Botanic Garden, is one such place. In fact, it was the first of its kind in the UK and remains one of the finest examples of how plants, carefully chosen for their vibrant stems, textural bark, fragrance, architectural shapes and late season flowers, can delight and inspire visitors on even the gloomiest of winter days.
“The Winter Garden has an exceptionally good season of interest,” Sally Pettit, Head of Horticulture, explains. “Even in September when the rest of the garden is beginning to look a bit lack-lustre, the Winter Garden is picking up and in summer it’s still structurally very interesting.”
It takes up about a quarter acre of the Botanic Garden’s 40-acre site. Roughly rectangular in shape, the Winter Garden is bound on all four sides by hedging with a tall bank of yew to the north and a lower mixed hedge to the south. A gravel path with a neat turf border meanders through the middle of the garden from the west and eastern entrances and, off the main walkway, another smaller path loops through the garden.
“This route is even more immersive than the main path,” Sally explains, “and there’s secluded benches where you can sit among the plants and really take it all in.”
Created in 1979 by Garden Superintendent Peter Orriss and Garden Supervisor Norman Villis, it was hailed as the first winter garden in the UK.
“In actual fact, we had a winter garden here in the 1950s, but it was very much of its time so, when it was due to be redeveloped, the staff decided to replace it with something more contemporary.”
Cambridgeshire is renowned for the flatness of its landscape so to add more dynamism the area was sculpted to create a pair of south-facing valleys, with mounds, dips and undulations. Careful thought was also given to the garden’s orientation, with the layout opening out to the south to allow the low winter sun to illuminate plants and intensify colours. The
stems of Cornus alba “Sibirica”, C. sanguinea “Midwinter fire” and Salix alba var. vitellina “Britzensis” are particularly impressive when sunlit, as are the cinnamon tones of Acer griseum’s peeling bark. Seedheads, such as the reflective discs of honesty (Lunaria annua) and ornamental grasses, including Miscanthus sinensis “Septemberrot” and Panicum virgatum “Northwind”, further brighten the scheme. Some of the new plantings have been dotted through, helping to give a naturalistic look.
Highly scented flowers play an important role, too, including
Mahonia x media “Charity”, Sarcococca confusa and the aptly named wintersweet, Chimonanthus praecox.
One particular shrub, Daphne bholua “Jacqueline Postill” is so popular that each year the grass in front of it gets worn away as visitors step forward to breathe in its intoxicating scent.
“If there was one key plant for lifting the spirits in winter, that would be it,” Sally says. Although it’s a large public garden, there are plenty of ideas to steal for those with more modestsized plots: the simple but effective intermingling of snowdrops and winter aconites; the rich stems of dogwoods offset by the limey coloured stinking hellebore and the arching grey stems of Rubus niveus underplanted with snowdrops.
A team of three gardeners care for the winter garden and dedicate at least one entire week to pruning. With shrubs it is often the new stems that have the strongest colour so these need to be cut back.
“We usually prune in April,” Sally says, “which gives plants plenty of time to regenerate.”
With dogwoods she recommends cutting down all but 5-6 stems, as plants grow more strongly if there is a bit of growth left on them.
During summer, Sally admits that the team irrigate any plants that are struggling, especially anything pruned hard. The well-drained alluvial soil, which is shallow and just about neutral, is mulched to retain moisture and suppress weeds.
“We use compost made from the recycled waste on site, but bark chips also work well.”
Looking back over the garden’s 40-year history it was evidently seriously ahead of the trend and has inspired countless plantings in gardens across the country.
“It really is testament to those who planted it,” Sally says. “Inevitably there are some losses in a garden as things die or outgrow the space and we’ve had to tweak and adapt, but ultimately the garden is still what it was intended to be all those years ago.”
Cambridge University Botanic Garden, 1 Brookside, Cambridge CB2 1JE. botanic.cam.ac.uk; 01223 336265 The garden is open every day except 24 Dec - 1 Jan.