Winter gardening

If you live in a particularly cold area, you may find it easier to focus on your winter plants than to fight against the short chilly summers. If you plan for winter and extend the cold season from October through to May you’ll find you have plants that cope well and look fantastic.

There are hundreds of plants that can really bring style and excitement to the winter garden, here are just a few to get you started:

Bulbs

Why not interplant, anemone blanda, bluebells, snowdrops and crocus sieberi 'Bowles White' for a pink white and blue carpet from February to April? Once they begin to face you can look forward to tulips and for cold regions you should focus on the varieties of Shakespeare, Stresa and Princess which flower early and strongly.

For the late autumn to midwinter you will find lovely strong colours in the forms of cyclamen coum and cyclamen hederifolium

Shrubs that love the cold include:

Calluna 'Silver Knight' and calluna vulgaris ‘Gold Haze’, two heathers that do their best in the chilliest of conditions – you can interplant them with erica carnea 'R B Cooke', 'Myretoun Ruby', 'Springwood White' and 'Vivelli' for a winter carpet in shades of red, purple, pink and white.

The dogwoods (Cornus) have bare winter branches in shades of lime green, lemon yellow or glowing red, depending on variety – they look superb against snow.

Gaultheria is a low growing pretty shrub that has bright red, Barbie pink or pure white berries through the winter. it looks lovely under a shrub like hamamelis (witch hazel to you and me) with catkins or a holly with bright contrasting berries.

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