Wealden Times | WT260 | January 2024 | Good Living Supplement inside

Winter Sparkle
Jo Arnell highlights the seasonal gems primed to light up your garden
Not much is actively growing
out in the garden – it is the
dormant season and our
plants are gently ticking over, preparing
themselves for the year ahead, or if
they are more tender, desperately
trying to survive the cold of a British
winter. We can help the less hardy with
mulch and fleece – and sometimes
this is enough, depending on how far
below zero the temperature goes…
Frost may spell trouble for some, but
it can look very pretty – a glittery
dusting of white enhancing structures
and evergreen shapes. If your garden is
looking far from magical right now, it
might be time to add (when the soil is
more receptive) some plants that will
manage the winter weather and stay
looking good through the bleak weeks.
Evergreens
It is hard to beat the quiet
handsomeness of a well-shaped
evergreen. Some are just made that way,
growing neat and well-formed without
any interference, others (a bit like
some of us) can be made to be pretty
with a little tweaking and pruning.
Taken to extremes, pruning evergreens
turns into an art form and plants
become living sculptures. Small
leaved shrubs like yew, pittosporum,
euonymus, famously box (but off the
menu in some gardens for now due to
the ravaging effects of the box moth
caterpillar) can be clipped into low
hedges, balls, spirals and pyramids. In
fact yew can be trained into any shape
you like, but it takes patience, practise
and a bit of vision to create them.
We might aim for a perfect peacock,
but end up with a squiffy squirrel.
Hardy evergreen shrubs will provide
structure and colour all year, as a foil
or backdrop to the summer plants, but
coming into the foreground in winter.
Frost may kill the more tender plants,
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