Winter Colour For Your Garden

Although winter approaches with shorter days and colder, wet weather, your garden needn't look lifeless and bland. With some creative planning using a combination of texture and colour, any outdoor space can look rich and vibrant over the coming months.

The key at this time of year is to plant your flowering plants nearer to your house in blocks of colour especially close to windows and along pathways. This will help to give the impression that the whole of your garden is still in bloom.

Whites, pinks and purples look good together and will create a brilliant winter display. Complementary plants are winter violas, pansies and dusty miller (Senecio Cineraria). Evergreen grasses, such as Carex, Acorus, blend beautifully with ornamental kale and cabbage and make great focal points. Flowering kale is also a great accent for evergreen ground cover and looks amazing planted below trees and winter flowering shrubs like Viburnum ‘Pink Dawn’.

There are many versatile trees, shrubs and plants that can give depth and texture to your garden and bring amazing colour with flowers, berries and leaves. You don’t have to worry if you have limited planting beds either, as many of these plants will also thrive in pots with the right care and attention.

Selection of winter colour plants and shrubs.

• Ilex Aquifolium J.C. Van Tol - English Holly: Dark, almost spineless green leaves and large, regular crops of red fruit
• Daphne Mezereum – Daphne: Well-known, sweet scented deciduous shrub flowering in February and March. Purple red flowers followed by scarlet fruits
• Callicarpa profusion - Beauty Berry: Free-fruiting shrub with bronze-purple foliage and dense clusters of violet fruits
• Chimonanthus praecox- Winter-sweet: Flowers around Christmas with beautiful purple centred yellow
• Helleborus Niger - Christmas Rose: Very easy to grow and blooming from Autumn through until spring
• Erica carnea - Springwood White (cultivar): Low-growing sub shrub reaching 10-25 cm in height. Evergreen needle leaves and dark red bell shaped flowers
• Lonicera Fragrantissima - Shrubby honeysuckle: Lovely flowering species with delicate creamy white flowers
• Corylus Avellana Contorta - Corkscrew Hazel: Easily to grow and very interesting visually, branches literally do corkscrew with beautiful rich green
• Garry Elliptica- Silk- tassel bush: Long tassels hang from this impressive plant during winter and early Spring, very unusual plant that complements more traditional plants in the garden
• Gaultheria Mucronata - Prickly heath: Evergreen shrub with dark green glossy leaves and clusters of small white flowers and purple fruit

How to Dead Head

Removing old flower heads or dead-heading your plants can extend their flowering period and improve their looks. It stops the plant from setting seed, which means that energy is used to produce more growth or flowers rather than diverted into seed head production. But there are some plants that you will grow which have attractive seed heads and fruit, which are also produced when flowers have died. Seed heads and fruit, as well as flowers, are major ornamental features. And, if you plan to grow more of the same plants from seed the following season you need the plants to set seed.

Here's a short list of some things that you will not want to dead-head: Clematis orientalis - late flowering clematis; Lunaria - honesty, Nigella - Love-in-a-mist; Pyracantha - firethorn; ornamental grasses. Some annuals and biennials will not produce any more flowers even after dead-heading. Poppies (Papaver) are the classic example here. In contrast, the flowered stems of lupins (Lupinus) can be cut back to the base when the first flower flush has faded. You may be rewarded by a second later flush of flowers.

Annuals for deadheading include: petunias, fleshy begonias, busy Lizzies (Impatiens), geraniums (Pelargoniums) and most of the other classic annuals grown for summer colour will keep on flowering if old flowerheads are removed. Flowering season can be extended by removing dead flower heads.

Dead-heading also improves the vigour of bulbs, as they will put energy back into the bulb for next year's flowers. Nip off the dead flowerhead of bulbs growing in longer grass.

For climbers, dead-heading is not always a practical option with many climbers. But where you can reach, take off the dead flower heads as they fade. If you want decorative seed heads or fruit, dead-head about a third of the plant stems, to keep up a flowering display.

Many perennials will flower for much longer if dead headed. So as not to denude borders completely, remove faded flower heads regularly, to promote longer flowering.

Don't dead-head roses which only flower once a season, or varieties grown for their decorative hips. Bush roses and repeat flowering climbers and ramblers respond well to you removing their dead blooms. Take out individual faded heads from each truss. When the whole truss has finished flowering, cut stems just above the second or third leaf down.

There are shrubs which benefit if their spent flower heads are removed so that energy is put into producing new growth for next season. It's not essential for the health of the shrub, but you may want to deadhead in very tiny gardens, or the shrubs which are closest to your house and patio. Use your fingers and thumbs to pick off faded heads where they join the stem of the plant. If you tear or snag stems, use secateurs to trim.