Winter Gardening Tips

The garden may look like a winter wonder land on first glance but what is happening to those plants under the frost and snow? Below are some helpful hints and tips to keep the garden looking tiptop and interesting in the most difficult season to face your foliage!

A great way of making a garden look interesting during winter is ensuring you have good structure. Here is were both shape and design are essential in enticing the eye not only to the beautiful winter weather, but also the actual plants. This could be provided by paths, stones, walls, hedges and in other modern gardens decking. Well-designed planting can often produce the same effect creating different levels and areas of interest.
Another important visual affect is colour which changes throughout the year depending on weather and season, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) recommends planting things such as deciduous shrubs and trees such as silver birch (Betula) and colourful dogwoods (Cornus), as the bright stems will catch the eye in the weak winter sunlight.

A well known tip is to plant evergreens which seem so essential in winter with its texture, shape and lush green colour which will brighten the garden when all else is bare. The RHS recommends using shrubs such as Skimmia japonica and Viburnum tinus at this time of year for colour and shape while accompanying them with highly scented flowers of Viburnum x bodnantense, which will bloom in the milder weather.

If you have a pond, your need to remember that as the weather gets colder, the aquatic plants may not survive the frost. A useful tip is to keep some in your green house or inside over winter for extra protection.