Eleanor Clarke

GARDEN

Colourful Winter Plants

It’s cold out, but your garden never needs to be gloomy! Brighten things up with a few of our top picks for winter colour, either in your flowerbeds or planted in pots by the front door.

Camellias

They come in all kinds of pinks, plus red and white, and they’re evergreen too. Perfect for a pot or semi-shaded bed. Give camellias acid soil (add a bag of ericaceous compost into the planting hole) and a spot that’s not east-facing (or frosted flowers can scorch in the morning sun and turn brown) and they’re easy to grow.

Clematis armandii

For early spring scent, it’s hard to beat this evergreen climber. Plant in a sunny spot for heaps of fragrant creamy-white flowers from late February into March.

Grape hyacinths (muscari)

Buy the little pots in bloom in late winter, and remember to transfer them to your garden when they finish flowering. A few pots under a deciduous tree or at the front of a flower border will spring up into vivid patches of blue for years to come.

Winter jasmine

With the brightest, most glorious yellow flowers on the darkest days, this is a cheerful shrub to tie in to wires over a fence in sun or shade. It’s easy to grow and undemanding.

Witch hazel (Hamamelis)

Witch hazels are a really unusual variety of large shrub. The flowers unfurl, spider-like, from shapely bare branches, in pale yellow, bright canary, tawny burnt orange or smoky red. They smell incredible too.

Remember, if we don’t have specific plants in stock, just come and ask one of the team. We’ll be happy to suggest an alternative or order it for you, if we can.