Winter Sparkle

Who doesn't love a garden with lots going on throughout the year, with most gardens that I design I am asked to provide all year round interest and in most cases this means evergreen plants. These plants and shrubs are invaluable and offer a welcome site of green at a time of year when most plants and shrubs are looking pretty bare or dead!

But they aren't the only plants to add a little bit of interest to a garden year round, a lot of those perennials and grasses that offer so much magic in Summer can continue to add some sparkle of interest through Winter too. Its just a case of experimenting and not chopping everything down in a hurry and this is good visually but it also has the benefit of providing homes for insects over Winter. Insects are vital as pollinaters as well as food for small mammels such as birds, hedehogs and mice. Not chopping down in a hurry can also protects those semi hardy plants from hard frosts by providing a shelter over the plant.

Visually in Winter some plants look good all the way through, some benefit from a little tidying up (if you like to keep things tidy) and some start to go soggy with frost and look better cut down - but there is no harm in experimenting. The goal is essentially to keep a garden looking gorgeous and inviting for as much of the year as possible and when designing with plants this is very much in mind.

Choosing plants that look good throughout the year sounds like a tall order but once you start to get familiar with plants and observe plants in other peoples gardens, or in public gardens over different seasons you start to spot the long term performers. Classics are ornamental grasses which have such a long season. One of the longest is Calamagrostis × acutiflora Karl Foerster which starts to grow in early Spring, has lovely slightly mauve seedheads before turning golden in Autumn. Through Winter it continues to stay upright and gradually gets thinner and thinner - looking ephermeral in Winter sunshine. See pictures below. As well as this you have Asters with their tiny little purple flowers in later Summer, that also with their little Winte starry heads continue to add to a Winter garden. Echinaceas are another long flowering hard working plant with its thin stem and cone seed head looks good for a long time into Winter.

Combining these plants or rather allowing their season to continue, combined with evergreen plants/ winter flowering plants like Sarcoccca's (ege Winter Gem), or Daphnes such as 'Jaqueline Postil' it is possible to have a garden that still looks pretty inviting and interesting over the Winter months.

Finally - when should you cut everything down - we dont tend to follow a hard anf fast rule its as long as everything is cut by the time everything has started growing as Spring has begun. We also start reducing the 'brown' as the bulbs start to grow, replacing the Winter colour with the fresh green growth of Spring. So it becomes a gradual switch of one Season finishing and another beginning.

If you want to find out more either contact me for a consultation or visit your local gardens eg RHS gardens, read books like Dream Plants for the Natural Garden by Piet Oudolf and Henk Gerritsan or search up on websites such as the RHS.

Allium Purple Sensation in the frost

David Austin rose 'Gertrude Jeykl' rosehips

Phloem's russeliana upright seedbeds

Panicum virgatum 'Heavy Metal'

Hylotelephium 'Purple Emperor' in the frost

Calamagrostis x acutiflora Karl Foerster in Winter sunshine