Page 18 - Royton Connected - February 2018

Garden View
This month – Sniff! Sniff!
No I don’t have a cold but this month I will be sniffing a lot. Mainly because of my winter-flowering shrubs. Every garden should have a couple of plants which bravely open their petals while winter is doing its worst.
Viburnum farreri or Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ or ‘Deben’ are upright shrubs which bear pretty clusters of pink-buds on their bare branches, that open into honey-scented white flowers. They are incredibly tough, withstanding all but the harshest of frost. It’s lovely to cut a few sprigs to stand in a jam jar indoors.
My favourite winter flowering shrub is the witch hazel plant Hamamelis mollis. It’s a delightful shuttlecock-shaped bush that explodes with citrus-scented spidery flowers right about now. I have the orange ‘Jelena’ in my garden but the pale yellow ‘Pallida’ and the deep red ‘Ruby Glow’ are equally lovely.
My dad had a wonderful winter-flowering honeysuckle in his garden: Lonicera fragrantissima, which I adored. A few years ago I discovered Lonicera x purpussi and fell in love. It has creamy white flowers and a really strong scent.
Even if you have a tiny garden you’ll have room for a Christmas Box Sarcococca confusa. It produces white whiskery flowers from among its dark shiny evergreen foliage. I have two in pots on either side of my path and I’ve had people stop in their tracks and return back towards the house sniffing, in search of the source of the amazing sweet, heady scent.
And don’t forget that there are scented snowdrops and tiny Iris reticulata which are deliciously perfumed too.
Time to get sniffing! Happy gardening.
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