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Winter scent
Mahonia in full winter bloom
Itââ¬â¢s easy to forget that a winter can be an enormous source of pleasure. On cold, grey days it is so tempting to sit indoors and do a little ar
But for those of us brave enough to venture out into the garden on a crisp, clear winter’s day, there are often a great many treats in store – especially if, like me, you’re a sucker for a sweet scent…
All through November, December and January, there is a plethora of flowering shrubs and trees bursting with sweet-smelling blossom. Here are just a few of my favourites…
Viburnum bodnantense is already in full flower in my Suffolk garden. Clusters of delicious, creamy-pink, vanilla-scented flowers which you can smell from quite a distance away – actually the scent is so strong it’s best planted at the back of a border where the perfume can drift across to you.
Mahonia is such a useful shrub. Evergreen, extremely hardy and forgiving, and with spectacular sculptural foliage, they produce stunning bright yellow flower spikes which smell a lot like lily of the valley.
Witch Hazel (Hamamelis) is another invaluable source of winter perfume. The petals look like thin wisps of coloured paper (they come in shades of yellow, red and orange). It’s always best to plant them where the low winter sun can shine through the blossoms, so that the flowers seem to glow as they release their richly sweet scent.
Clematis. Yep – there’s even a winter-flowering clematis which has a marvellous scent. Clematis cirrhosa balearica produces clusters of creamy bell-shaped flowers speckled inside with tiny splashes of burgundy. The scent is delicious but faint, so plant it against a sunny wall that you pass close by.
Honeysuckle. And there is a winter honeysuckle as well. Lonicera fragrantissima is a strongly scented climber that will rapidly cover a large area once it gets started. Its flowers are pretty insignificant – small pairs of tiny white wings with yellow stamens – and even these will disappear beneath leaves in sheltered areas where the plants can be semi-evergreen. But the scent is delightful, rather like freesia, so it’s well worth growing for the perfume alone.
So do take a moment to remember winter scent and perhaps plant a treasure of your own somewhere you regularly pass by during these cold winter months.
