Leafless Months - Creating Winter Interest

Inevitably we spend more time in our gardens during the summer months when there is an abundance of flowers, foliage, scent, colour and wildlife.  But in this country we have around five leafless months, and though we spend less time loitering in the garden we can still make it interesting.  When planning for winter consider that different areas of the garden will be the focus.  Views from the inside the house deserve attention.  Frequently used routes, such as the path from car to door, may be of no significance in summer but a succession of spring bulbs will be noticed and appreciated here.

During winter the emphasis is on different qualities:  coloured stems, berries, bark, scent, structural shapes, light and shadow are more noticeable.  Spent flowering stems, especially with seed pods add interest and valuable refuge for overwintering insects.  Sedum and Phlomis russelliana are good examples.  Grass stems add structure in herbaceous beds.  However, the golden stems encrusted with hoar frost pictured in magazines are rare in our mild wet Cornish climate, and grasses seldom last winter without becoming scruffy.  Shrubs such as the contorted hazel and the wire-netting bush (Corokia cotoneaster) have interesting skeletons.  Evergreen shrubs are a background to floral bounty in the summer, but as leaves fall and herbaceous planting dies down the evergreens reveal themselves as backbone structures.  Shrubs such as yew and box can be topiarised, or just kept trimmed to contain their size. Other evergreens such as camellias have showy flowers visible from a distance and are worth siting to be visible from indoors.

The white-stemmed birches are a beautiful and familiar sight, but there are others.  The Chinese red birch (Betula albosinensis septentrionalis) has honey/rust/pink bark revealing different shades as it peels.  B ‘Grayswood Hill’ has gorgeous smooth creamy/pink bark.  For shaggy peeling bark consider the paperbark maple (Acer griseum) with glowing chestnut coloured peeling bark.  In contrast the Tibetan Cherry (Prunus serrula) has smooth shiny chestnut coloured bark looking as if it’s been polished.  The winter flowering cherry (P subhirtella autumnalis) flowers from November through to spring. It is never a cloud of blossom but keeps opening flowers throughout winter.  There are two flowering outside the information hut in the bumblebee garden.

Red-stemmed dogwoods are a familiar sight, but there are other colours.  C alba ‘Kesselringii’ has very dark black/purple stems, C ‘Flaviramea’ has fresh bright green stems. ‘Midwinter Fire’ lives up to its name, making a show-stopping sight when planted en masse.  Ornamental brambles such as R cockburnianus are an idea for larger gardens.  This makes a tangled mass of ghostly mauve/white stems but is vicious to manage. 

Many of the winter flowering shrubs have good fragrance to attract pollinators.  Wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox) and winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) are two examples, both pretty unremarkable bushes in summer but valuable winter performers.  Similarly, Christmas box is easy to ignore until it flowers and fills the garden with fragrance.  Coronilla valentina, a small semi-evergreen shrub with fragrant yellow pea flowers is seldom without a bloom, and can be squeezed into the smallest garden.  Mahonias are reliable performers 

There are several varieties of clematis which flower in winter.  C armandii is evergreen with clusters of pink or white flowers in February and will fill a large space.  Varieties of C cirrhosa, the fern-leaved clematis, are smaller.  If you have a very sheltered spot C Winter Beauty is worth a try with little white waxy bells.

Hellebores and bulbs, especially crocus, are valuable for pollinators as well as providing colour.  Bulbs in pots can be moved nearer to windows and doors when they flower and can be combined with winter bedding such as pansies and heather to add colour.  Bird feeders can also be moved, or extra feeders added to sites visible from indoors.