How to bring seasonal colours, scents and fruit to your garden

There is nothing jollier: fill a 20cm pot or a window box with peat-free compost and get going. Hellebores are a top winter flower: you can get them in pink, red, purple, white, yellow and even black.

Partner with a small Polypodium fern, or grass-like Carex “Everest” with its variegated leaves to create a colourful Winter eye piece. Underplant with white or pink Cyclamen coum. Plant everything in a rough triangle, with the larger hellebore at the back, the carex, or fern in one front corner and the cyclamen in the other, this will create a terrace effect.

Sunny indoor window sills are prime real estate for growing fresh salad leaves. Fill a regular seed tray with peat-free compost, placing a water tray beneath. Sow lettuce seeds sparingly on the surface: “Salad Bowl” are light growth are good fast growing, but any cut-and-come-again variety will do. Sow every three weeks for a regular supply and pick outer leaves from each plant, leaving the younger leaves to grow.

Pop outside now and you will find plenty of plant material to create a dried arrangement. Fallen twigs for structure, grasses for fluff and seed heads for shape. Miscanthus and Cortaderia (pampas) grasses work well alongside poppy and allium seed heads. Look along country path walks and verges for wild grasses, teasel and wild carrot, wild celery, but leave enough for birds, as they eat the seeds from the dried heads. Some dried flowers keep their colour, such as Helichrysum and Persicaria amplexicaulis, or you could cheat with watercolour, or spray paint.

Retro wonder Schlumbergera x buckleyi is the true Christmas cactus and has smooth-edged segments, not toothed ones like its relative Struncata, known as the Thanksgiving cactus. Both are available in shops, or online in red, pink, white and apricot. Easy to care for Schlumbergera are not real cacti, but succulents from humid Brazilian forests. Grow near a window out of direct sun and allow compost to dry before watering, remove from the window at night when the glass gets cold, as this will colour off the edges. Snap stem segments off and place the bottom third in compost to grow new plants for presents.

Fallen leaves make excellent compost and breaks down from such a large amount collected to a small mulch: rake up as many as you can, or collect them with a lawn mower, which can help with chopping tougher leaves, like oak. Pile into a compost bin, or keep in bags with drainage holes for water to run out. It takes time and after a year or so, it will be soft, crumbly compost.

You can jazz up your winter garden with the colour and scent of witch hazel, Hamamelis x intermedia, a large shrub flowering on bare stems. Aphrodite has orange flowers and Goldcrest yellow, both with a strong scent. Ruby Glow does not have much scent, making up for it with flowers that do exactly what they promise. Plant in a sunny to part-shaded sheltered spot to protect from wind and enclose the scent.

In the vegetable bed, this is your last chance to sow broad beans outside for a spring harvest. Sow the seeds 5cm deep, 23cm apart in rows 30cm apart. In exposed or colder areas, cover with a cloche, or a horticultural fleece. They need little care through winter and are one of the best groundcovers, slowing weeds by blocking light.

December is the last chance tulip and daffodil planting month. I prefer those that reliably flower every year, such as Spring Green and Negrita. Tiny T turkestanica has cream flowers and will multiply every year, as will fuchsia Little Beauty. Plant three, or four times the depth of the bulb.

While they are dormant, apples and pears should be pruned for a better crop next year. First cut out dead, damaged, diseased, or rubbing branches. Then identify four to five main branches that form a cup shape, removing others and any upright shoots in the middle. Reduce main branches by a third and cut long side shoots to 20cm (the length of secateurs). Cut away any branches that cross over and through the tree, you should be looking to create air and space through the tree.

Happy Christmas!

 ©Rob Knowlittle, December 2022 @drjohngardening