International School Parent Magazine - Spring 2022

Viburnum tinus
“Eve Price”
©HM
In Praise of (early) Flowers
WRITTEN BY HESTER MACDONALD
There’s something very cheering
about the sight of a plant bravely
flowering at this time of year,
despite the elements. It’s not just humans
that appreciate early-flowering plants; bees
and other nectar and pollen-hungry insects
depend on them too. They particularly
need food sources at a time of year when
they first venture from the hive, such as on
warm days in late winter or early spring.
You can help your local bee populations
survive and even recover from the winter
by having a wide selection of late winter
and early spring-flowering plants in a
garden or on a balcony. The ideal is to have
something in flower every day of the year,
but if space is tight or budgets are limited,
then it’s a good tactic to focus on providing
food for the hardest times of year for bees.
You can leave the summer months to other
gardens and gardeners, as there’s plenty
to choose from then, but in the January-
March period there isn’t much for bees to
nourish themselves and their hives.
Small trees, like Chimonanthus praecox,
or “wintersweet” are easy to include in a
family or school garden. They make an
attractive feature planted on their own,
or combine well with other shrubs and
perennials in a mixed border. As well as
their beautiful butter-yellow petals, up close
you can see the gorgeous contrast of the
deep red centres. Once you get near to the
plant you can enjoy the fragrance, which
is the real appeal of this, and many other
winter-flowering shrubs. In order to attract
pollinators from far and wide, the plant
needs to smell sweet and distinctive. This
plant has a fragrance somewhere between
that of cloves and honey, and is well worth
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL PARENT SPRING 2022 | 52
a trip down the garden on a warm day, or
better yet, plant it by a door so you can
enjoy the smell without even putting on
your boots. Like many winter-flowering
plants, the flowers of Chimonanthus are
slightly waxy, which helps them to resist
the rain, and hang down from the leafless
branches, also to help the rain to drip
straight off without damaging the pollen.
Viburnums come in all shapes and sizes,
a genus of shrubs and small trees that
thrive in the Northern Hemisphere with
a few, more unusual members managing
to survive in Asia and Africa too. Two
particular members of the genus are
fantastic for providing nectar and pollen for
bees in early spring. The first is Viburnum
tinus, which is a very adaptable evergreen
shrub. If left unpruned it gets to about
3m tall and wide, but is easy to prune