Wealden Times | WT191 | January 2018 | Interiors supplement inside

Garden
Winter Sweet
Jo Arnell warms up the winter garden with
fragranced seasonal blooms
Flower power
There is not much that flowers at the bleak dark start
of the year. What blossom there is tends to be small
and weather resistant. Flowers hang their shy heads
or modestly tuck themselves behind evergreen leaves.
Some are so small that they’re almost invisible – walk
too fast and you might not notice them at all. What you
will notice though, is their scent. Many winter flowers
make up for their lack of colour and size with powerful
fragrances – designed to attract pollinating insects.
Sadly for the plants, most of the insects have either died,
or are waiting out the winter, as larvae, or in stasis as adults
– hiding in log piles, garden sheds and the gaps in our
window panes. Because there are so few of them around,
the plants have to compete for their attention. Just as we are
drawn by the scent of a bacon sandwich or freshly baked
cake, any insects that are still out and about are lured by
the promise of nectar wrapped up in a fragrant flower.
Deciduous shrubs
Many of the early flowers appear on bare stems, long before
any leaves start to grow. Once the leaves do appear these
shrubs revert to being straggly nothings, but right now they
are the stars of the show. Winter Sweet (Chimonanthus
praecox) is one of these humble bushes, with small cream
coloured flowers perfumed with hints of citrus. Lonicera
‘Winter Beauty’ is a winter flowering shrubby honeysuckle
that produces masses of sweetly scented flowers in January
and February. It is the scent that is beautiful, not the
bush. Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Deben’ is better behaved
with small pink buds opening to become highly fragrant
white flowers. These shrubs are well suited to a pathside
position, but they need to be able to bow out and
retreat into the background once they come into leaf.
If you have the space for a specimen, try a Witch Hazel:
Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Pallida’ has scented flowers that
climb its bare branches like little yellow spiders. It also has
good autumn foliage, which helps to redeem the other
eight months of dull green leaf. Grow it as a specimen, as it
eventually gets quite large.
A delicate climber for a
sunny, sheltered position
is Clematis cirrhosa var.
balearica. Each cream
coloured bell is speckled
reddish brown, and the
citrus scent is released
on sunny winter days.
Evergreens
Daphnes are the ultimate
winter plant. Many
147 wealdentimes.co.uk