Is your garden looking bare at this time of year? Planting up containers is an easy way to change the scene during the wintry months and really to savour the difference in season — like pudding after a main course. Do not attempt to make everything look like June; instead, aim for a more subtle look, with one or two pots quietly taking the spotlight.
There is a huge range of containers around, but the classics are still hard to beat. Terracotta pots decorated with swags or horizontal lines, Versailles tubs, modern zinc drums and half- barrels are all handsome. Don’t turn your nose up at plastic copies of terracotta, either — they are light (an important consideration when dealing with a roof terrace), inexpensive and an easy way to introduce different scales into a garden.
By using the largest containers your space will allow, your plants will not only need less watering; you will also give the impression your garden is part of a much larger space.
There is still just time to plant spring bulbs, such as a container packed full of black parrot tulips or blue scented muscari. Group smaller pots containing spring bulbs such as crocuses, scillas, dog’s tooth violets and fritillaries around your permanent ones. One variety to each container should be the rule.
Box does well in containers, giving structure and a setting for plants, and in the winter you really notice its sparkling foliage. Stylish on its own as a cube, ball, or pyramid, it is equally good as a standard mophead, surrounded with flowering plants while young.
Almost any annual would work around box in the summer, with pansies, cyclamen or ornamental cabbages suitable in the winter. When the tree is older, you can substitute the flowers with cobbles. Box provides instant, living sculpture, and a line of standards or spirals would decorate a narrow walk or shady balcony beautifully. Randomly grouped, in different sizes, they would bring interest to the most dreary corner.
Like box, ivy is both structural and evergreen. Attached to trellis rectangles, columns or pyramids, it gives useful height and is also good on simple wire shapes to make quick-fix topiary. Ivy is beautiful, too, trained as dark green swags, to enliven the sides of a plain container.
Winter or universal pansies are indispensable. I like the deep blue, soft yellow and creamy white ones with black centres best. Multicoloured pansies can look chic, too.
Violas, which are related to pansies, also look good. They have smaller flowers but more of them. The jet-black viola ‘Molly Sanderson’ is superb; with regular deadheading, it will flower all winter. Then, after a light trim in the spring, it starts all over again and continues all summer with astonishing generosity.
Tiny cyclamen are charming in almost any colour and, being woodlanders, they are happy in the shade. Grow them in low pans, with plenty of grit. Don’t water them too often, and remove spent flowers regularly.
Heathers provide a welcome change of texture. I grow them in a single colour in old pots, grouping them round an ornamental wire ball, which rests on a large container. Erica ‘Gracilis’ is the one to go for and comes in sealing-wax pink, pale pink and white. Like hydrangeas, heathers look good even when fading, until they are replaced or moved out of sight in the spring.
A pot or two of smart black ophiopogon (Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’) will bring instant style to any winter scene. When you want a change, it transplants easily from pots into the garden, where you could make a broad circle of it, using it to counter a shrub such as Viburnum fragrans.
To me, no autumn or winter garden is complete without ornamental cabbages. I like to mass them on their own in shades of pink, cream and sea-green, like an expensive box of chocolates.
Winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) is looking beautiful in my garden at the moment. The flowers are an excellent yellow and it needs little sun and hardly any cultivation. For a change, you could grow it over a pair of wigwams made from bamboo canes and bring it into the house for Christmas Day.
When your jasmine plants have grown too big for their pots, you could transfer them to the ground and place them either side of a seat, water feature or a change in level, adding clematis or annual climbers for summer interest.
Corkscrew hazels (Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’) do well in pots, too. They are quite happy to be sprayed gold for Christmas and returned to the garden when the catkins are over, just before bud-break.
Looking ahead, camellias will start flowering early in the new year. The delicately striped Camellia japonica ‘Lavinia Maggi’ stole my heart many years ago; I grow it as a pair of standards in one of my town gardens, flanking a picket gate. Pure, soft-white ‘Cornish Snow’ is lovely, too.
Wooden half-barrels, stained dark green or black, are the best containers for these grand plants. Once planted, try not to move them; they will flower better for being slightly pot-bound. And give camellias a northerly or westerly aspect, so that the flowers don’t get defrosted too quickly after a cold night.
As soon as hellebores begin to show their buds and snowdrops start to nose out of the ground in early new year, gently lift them and pot them up. Hide any roots with moss and place them where you can see them from the house, or where you pass every day. When they have finished flowering, return them to the garden. Put a note in your diary to look out for different hellebores, primulas and snowdrops in garden centres and at horticultural shows in early February.
Don’t forget window boxes, either. I particularly like wooden troughs, painted matt black, containing scented hyacinths. Plant them at a depth of twice the height of the bulb. ‘Carnegie’ is a good white; ‘City of Haarlem’ is a soft yellow; while ‘Delft Blue’ is dark blue. They flower in March and April.
Underplant them with blue Muscari azureum, or the white variety, ‘Album’. Alternatively, cover the hyacinths with moss and decorate with birch twigs sprayed in a bright colour while you are waiting for the bulbs.
For a really pretty effect, place four tiny box spheres in a long trough and cover the sides with a grey and green ivy, such as Hedera ‘Glacier’. At the base of the trough, plant a layer of cream and lemon Narcissus ‘Jack Snipe’ bulbs, not quite touching each other. Cover with a layer of soil, then plant with black and white universal pansies for them to grow through.
Red-budded scented Skimmia ‘Rubella’ will flower right through to the early summer as long as you keep it deadheaded and watered. Cluster them together in a long terracotta trough and underplant with lemon-coloured variegated ivy. Add crocuses for further spring interest, planted just below the soil surface. ‘Ladykiller’ is a dark purple and white stripe; ‘Snow Bunting’ is a soft cream; and ‘Blue Pearl’ is a soft azure.
A window box with nothing but red cyclamen will look festive for Christmas. Underplant them with Iris reticulata, which will appear in February, and lapis-blue Scilla siberica for March and April. Or a simple box of Narcissus ‘Tête-à-Tête’ is hard to beat for spring. All of these small bulbs will transfer into the garden: leave them to die down naturally for at least six weeks after flowering before moving them.
Finally, treat your winter pots exactly as you would other containers, but water them less often. Regularly deadhead, and watch out for slugs, snails and aphids, especially in mild spells. And it is unwise to water any terracotta pot after midday — there is a real danger of freezing and the pot cracking.
Containers: Chelsea Gardener, 020 7352 5656, www.chelseagardener.com; Clifton Nurseries, 020 7289 6851, www.clifton.co.uk; Whichford Pottery, 01608 684 416, www.whichfordpottery.com; B&Q, 0845 850 0175, www.diy.com
Topiary: The Romantic Garden Nursery, 01603 261 488, www.romantic-garden-nursery.co.uk; Langley Boxwood Nursery, 01730 894 467, www.boxwood.co.uk; Crocus, 0870 787 1413, www.crocus.co.uk
Camellias: Camellia Grove Nursery, 01403 891 143, www.camellia-grove.com; Rotherview Nursery, 01424 756 228, www.rotherview.com; Trehane Nursery, 01202 873 490, www.trehanenursery.co.uk
Bulbs: Jacques Amand, 020 8420 7110, www.jacquesamand.com; Broadleigh Gardens, 01823 286 231, www.broadleighbulbs.co.uk; J Parker, 0161 848 1100, www.jparkers.co.uk; Avon Bulbs, 01460 242 177, www.avonbulbs.com
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