Garden Centre

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Plants as structure – the bones of the winter garden

These are the seed heads of garlic chives. Not our 'eating' garlic chives, which have their heads resolutely lopped off as soon as they appear – which always makes me feel like the Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass, yelling ‘off with their heads’ every two minutes – but our decorative chives.

I have two lots of both kinds of chives, eating ones right outside the door, where I can nip out and grab a bunch for salads, or to chop and lay on top of any egg dish I happen to be cooking, and decorative chives, in clumps in the garden and the latter are grown just for these lovely seed heads.

They will last all winter, and give varying effects to the garden when not a lot else is in bloom. Through November they are usually wet and windblown, and have subtle shades of brown and beige. Into December they become paler and drier and tend to be rimmed with frost. With any luck, in January, they will be standing stalwart but fragile above a layer of snow, and in February I go out and cut them down, ready for the spring growth that appears like magic in March.

Dried plant material, whether seed heads or berries, or certain flowers (like sunflowers) left on the plant stem all winter, can add real interest to the garden. Matched with winter flowering plants (hellebores are my favourite) and berrying plants for splashes of colour, they can give you a garden as full of interest in the cold months as in the summer.

Labels: chives, seed heads, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:41 AM

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