I hope the New Year finds you fit and healthy and ready to enjoy a great year of gardening in 2023. Last year was challenging in many ways but the weather always brings rewards as well as problems and the heat and sun certainly helped my apples.
This is the time when, with all the Festive work behind me, apart from taking down the tree and decs, I start planning the garden in earnest. Actually, planning started a day or so ago since, like many others, I have been laid up with some bug. At least it limited Christmas excesses since I didn’t feel like eating much.
Our gardens don’t usually look their best at this time of year so it is not difficult to look across borders and think of ways to improve them. I still have lots of spaces to fill and it is a fun exercise to make lists of plants that I need to buy to give the garden colour and form. It is nice to flick through books and magazines and imagine how plants will look in my own borders.
I need to plant more shrubs and those with colourful foliage have the benefit of providing interest for months rather than weeks, compared with flowering shrubs. I already have physocarpus in the garden but there are now many forms with purple, yellow and orange foliage so more are being added to my list. They are easy to grow, tolerate most soils and can be easily pruned. I like weigelas but they have a short flowering season. Recent introductions have extended flowering periods, compact growth or colourful leaves, so I would suggest another look at these easy, hardy shrubs. And spiraeas are improving too, with long flowering seasons. All these common shrubs now have a new look so add them to your shopping and planting list – I am.
But we all like some instant effect and, with the recent mild weather, hellebores are already looking good. All hellebores are lovely and every garden needs them. New hybrids are being produced all the time and the most affordable are the double ‘Ellen’ hybrids. They are raised from seed and are easy and reliable. Like most hellebores, the flowers nod a little so they are especially lovely when planted on a shady bank so you can see them from below (as above).
They are also great companions for winter heathers, provided you do not allow the hellebore leaves to swamp the heathers in summer.
The most exciting new hellebores are those in the HGC series – look for the colourful labels and ‘Gold Collection’. These do not set seeds and are very vigorous and colourful. These cost a bit more than most but they really are the ‘Rolls Royce’ of hellebores. There is a wide range of colours and most have large flowers that face outwards and hold themselves well. They are long-lived and valuable plants for the winter garden, blooming for three months.
This (poor) photo shows them now, with a few old leaves remaining, The three plants are now three years old and are the most colourful plants in the garden from January till March when spring bulbs then steal the show.
All these hellebores grow well in part shade in almost any soil, including clay and chalk. But they appreciate some organic matter too so treat them well and they will rewards you for many years.
Next week we begin the gardening in earnest!