UP THE GARDEN PATH
Louise Tomlin offers suggestions for lifting your spirits and brightening up your winter garden with flowering scented shrubs.
It can be tough to find things to lift your spirits in the depths of winter. The cold weather, dark mornings and evenings, and let’s be honest some pretty dark days too, whether it’s the depressing news or the pandemic blues, cheeriness can be in short supply. So I felt I’d really got my work cut out to find something heartening in the garden to talk about.
The light bulb moment came when I was thinking how much I miss the flowers of the spring and summer, longing for the boost you get from the colour and scent, the buzzing of bees…It’s easy to think these don’t happen in winter, but they do and once you start looking for them they are there in abundance. It’s not just us that get to benefit from these winter flowering shrubs, they provide a vital food source for winter active pollinators like bumblebees, honey bees and hover flies that will venture out if temperatures start to climb to above 10 C.
Here are just four suggestions that you may want to consider
having in your garden to bring you some future winter cheer, but there are many more available at the garden centre (when they are open again) or if you search online, for winter flowering shrubs.
Clematis, the very popular climber is definitely not a plant I associate with flowering in the winter, it’s usually a mass of lovely flowers throughout the warmer months, so imagine my surprise on finding this beauty, with pale cream, lemony scented bell like flowers with dark evergreen leaves. Clematis cirrhosa (bottom left photo) flowers between January to March, will brighten up a sheltered wall or maybe plant it close to a doorway so you get a blast of its perfume as you pass through.
No need to worry about this next one being hardy, Daphne (top photo) is originally from Nepal. It will reach around 2-3m high and produces clusters of flowers in varying shades of pink with a heady clove like scent reminiscent of carnations. It should flower from December through to March dependent on where you are in the UK.
Mahonias (middle photo) have spiny leaves that resemble holly with sprays of bright yellow scented flowers and will grow almost anywhere in well-drained soil, even in shady spots. A good tip is to give them plenty of room. There are many different varieties to choose from, some can get quite large so it’s best to check the one you choose is appropriate to the size of border.
My final choice for you is Choisya Ternata (Bottom right photo), but I think its common name Mexican orange blossom sounds much better, conjuring up thoughts of warmth and delicious perfume, and that’s just what you will get from the sweet white flowers that contrast well with glossy evergreen foliage. It shouldn’t need a lot of space reaching a max height and spread of 2.5m, and if you give it a gentle trim after flowering you should get repeat performances.
I now realise after researching for this that there are so many more plants and shrubs that flower through the winter months like Hellebores, Viburnham and Hamamelis (witch hazel) that I haven’t got space to show you, but I hope this may have inspired a few of you to have a go at creating a winter flowering area to enjoy in years to come. In the meantime let’s look forward to less dark times and more joyful sunshine in 2021. Keep safe everyone.
