It’s the test of a real gardener to make a garden that looks good through the coldest days of winter. At this time of year a garden reveals its bones; a well-designed layout and a carefully chosen palette of seasonal plants can introduce structure, form, colour and enticing scent to create a space guaranteed to banish the ‘winter blues’. Given the crispest of days with the sparkle of frost, and the soft light and shadows cast by a low sinking sun, a garden will be further transformed into something magical.
Early flowering snowdrops (Image: Jim Holden @ RBG Kew)
A visit to the Winter Garden at Wakehurst will provide plenty of inspiration. Here, in a sheltered spot of the estate, alongside its Elizabethan mansion is a masterclass in design and planting for winter interest. Created by Garden Manager Francis Annette six years ago, on the site of an earlier 1980s winter garden, his design was inspired by different winter landscapes such as the Siberian tundra and heathlands of nearby Ashdown Forest and the South Downs. ‘I noticed a theme of a distinct block of one plant followed by a block of another and so on’ he explains. ‘I wanted to capture this while making sure the garden created a sensory overload of colour, scent and textural contrasts.’
Wakehurst Winter Drone January 2021, (Image: Visual Aie @RBG Kew)
The layout is simple with eight large sinuous shaped beds connected with wide paths weaving between them. The planting is on a large scale with some 33,000 plants and 46 different taxa, but the spaces feel intimate and immersive, they flow with repeated and textured layers of plants and well positioned groups of trees and shrubs creating striking focal points that catch the winter light and lead you through the space.
Dense ribbons of low ground cover plants include evergreens such as the bright emerald Japanese sedge Carex morrowii, early flowering pink and white heathers and glossy dark green and bronze leaved bergenias. Among these are swathes of deciduous grasses with their buff brown and pale hued seed heads that gently rustle and ripple as they catch the wind – especially effective are the compact lower growing Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Little Bunny’ with its soft bottle brush seed heads and the tall feathery grass Calamagrostis x acutifola ‘Karl Foerster’.
Colourful stems of dogwood contrast with witch hazels (Image: Jim Holden @ RBG Kew)
Providing dramatic colour and contrast to these blocks of planting are the vertical bare stems of dogwoods Cornus alba Sibirica’ and
C. sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’ in shades of scarlet, fiery reds and orange planted alongside the vivid green stems of the willow Salix alba ‘Britzensis’. Such bold groups of colour contrast brilliantly with the ghostly, snowy silhouettes of Himalayan birch at the centre of the garden. These fully mature specimens of Betula utilis var. jacquemontii planted in the earlier winter garden make striking individual features with their sculptural form and multi layers of branches while more recent plantings of this coveted small winter tree with its’ peeling white bark are arranged in columnar groups that lead the eye across the garden and provide height and dimension to the overall picture. Other striking cultivars of birch here are B. albosinensis Fascination with its pinky-white bark and attractive long catkins and B.utilis Wakehurst Place Chocolate’ with peeling bark in rich shades of brown.
Witch hazel’s fragrant spidery flowers (Image: Jim Holden @ RBG Kew)
Flowers in winter are small petalled, evolved to offer some protection against cold winds, frost and snow. They can be colourful though and are often highly scented to attract whatever bees and pollinating insects might still be active. Witch hazels are a valuable cold weather shrub that make a real show with fascinating small spidery flowers that hang from bare branches and waft subtle scents across nearby paths. In a range of shades from rich reds and tawny rusts to pale lemon, the flowers can smell sweetly of honey or lemons. At Wakehurst the cultivars Hammelis x intermedia ‘Pallida’ with sulphur-yellow flowers and a citrus fruity scent and the orange and yellow flowered H. x intermedia ‘Orange Peel’ create clouds of hazy colour among the drifts of buff-coloured grasses.
Intensely scented Daphne bholua (Image: Jim Holden @ RBG Kew)
Other good shrubs for winter scent are evergreen mahonias with their lily of the valley fragrance and evergreen Daphne bholua with deep pink buds and a rich spicy perfume. The cultivar D.bholua Jacqueline Postill is prized by gardeners for its strong upright form, its profusion of blossom pink flowers and a longer lasting more intense fragrance that literally stops you in your tracks.
Pink Cyclamen coum (Image: Jim Holden @ RBG Kew)
As winter moves towards spring and the days grow longer late winter and early spring bulbs start to emerge beneath the skirts of shrubs and trunks of trees. At Wakehurst among groups of jewel flowered hellebores and delicate snowdrops, carpets of crimson and white flowered Cyclamen coum create a vivid tapestry of colour. These ground level gems extend the season and inspire with another layer of beauty to brighten our gardens even on the coldest and dullest of days.
Wakehurst, Ardingly, Haywards Heath, Sussex RH17 6TN,
01444 894066. wakehurst@kew.org
Opening times and information: www.kew.org/wakehurst
Sinuous paths lead through the garden (Image: Jim Holden @ RBG Kew)
Comments are closed.