It's often hard to find anything positive to say about the garden in winter.  I love colour and fragrance and winter flowering plants have these in abundance.  Their scent is subtle but intense - it has to to attract pollinating insects at a time of year when not much else will entice them into the garden.  And the colours of winter plants are jewel-like: rich reds of cornus and the yellows of mahonia.

One genus of plants which I'm loving more and more is the Viburnum.  It's a big group of plants, the genus consists of 150 or more species of evergreens, semi-evergreens and deciduous shrubs and trees. I love these plants because they tick all the boxes: they're tough, low-maintenance, many have fragrant flowers often from autumn to spring, they produce berries, are wildlife-friendly and need little pruning, they tolerate sun or partial shade and do well in all but the most waterlogged soil.

Viburnums are widely found in Northern Temperate regions but also originate from China, South East Asia and South America.  They have a history of being popular: they feature in the designs of Capability Brown and Humphrey Repton and in the past viburnum tinus was grown as clipped specimens in pots and appear in Gertrude Jekyll's tome, Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden, where she talks of viburnum opulus  (she calls it water elder).  Viburnums are an excellent choice for garden design, being well suited to a formal design. The 'wedding cake' tree, V.plicatum f. tomentosum 'Mariesii', makes a striking specimen here, with its spreading branches forming horizontal 'layers'. 

I have 3 viburnums: v.tinus 'Eve Price', v.tinus 'Gwenllian', and v. davidii, with its clusters of blue berries. I brought all these with me when I moved to Somerset from Wiltshire.  The soil here needed a lot of work and I doubted they'd do well.  Not only have they done well, they're positively thriving, the flowers of Eve Price lighting up a shady part of the garden in these dark winter days.

Viburnum tinus looks very good on its own or as a background to other shrubs.  Eve Price is probably the best known of this group, but there are others, such as Lucidum, and the variegated variety, 'Variegatum'.

I'm very lucky that in a garden I work in there is a mature viburnum bodnantese 'Dawn'.  The scent of vanilla that wafts across the garden as I work is truly delicious.   I don't know much about the psychology of fragrance, but it must play a part in elevating mood and creating a positive outlook. 


 

 

 

                  

                     

 

 

Autumn

I love autumn in the garden: some gardeners say autumn is the beginning of the gardening year, but is there really a beginning and an end?  Or is gardening rather an ongoing process? No sooner has summer waved goodbye than next spring already beckons,  thanks to bulbs.  These little packs of energy give something to look forward to through the dark days of winter.  I've planted hundreds this autumn, and I love going shopping for them, for myself and my clients.  Today I spent an enjoyable 3 hours planting not just bulbs, but primroses, heucheras and tiarellas. 

Bulbs in the Cutting Patch

 

This autumn we’ve potted up some bulbs in pots.  This is an experiment – they will eventually be planted out in the cutting patch, which is at this moment full of dahlias and chrysanthemums still flowering  in all their glory.  We want a ‘cutting patch’ of bulbs to flower continuously from January to April, or farther.  With that in mind, we have winter-flowering red carnations, winter aconites, snowdrops, narcissi, and the tenby daffodil.  We’ll add some tulips and hellebores.

 

 

In August

The cutting patch has been a revelation this year.  Previously, it was covered in decking, but that had to go.  In March I dug it over and added lots of home-made compost, then planted it with pinks, dahlias, zinnias, evening primrose, chrysanthemums, and sowed seed of cornflowers, cosmos and stocks. In mid June it was a riot of colour, not to mention fragrance. We never used the ‘cutting patch’ as a cutting patch – we just enjoyed the jewel-like colours.  We’ll see what happens through the winter.

 

  

The Joy of Flowers

 I've gardened for 15 years but only recently, since moving to Somerset, have I been inspired to create a website.   It's an interesting change in direction.  

 

Slow shutter-speed flowers taken at dusk in July

 

Today, August  7th, is therefore a new chapter for me in my business, the creation of a blog and to use the jargon of business, to provide an outward facing site to readers, friends and maybe a customer or two.

 

I will develop this site over the coming month, by September if all goes to plan, I plan to have the static elements of the site in place, with a weekly blog here of what's happening in Gardening and Art.

 

Thank you, Julie.