Five winter-flowering plants to bring joy to the world

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Snow, floods, midday temperatures like a mild spring’s: Britain’s November had them all, as never in my lifetime. Even so, it left a scattering of flowers. They are my buys of the season, a high five for the run-up to Christmas.

None of them is an indoor plant. Two of them have indoor relations, but in a heated house between Christmas and mid-January I am a great killer. The best flowers are in my halfway houses, window boxes.

When winter-flowering pansies first came on to the market, I was sceptical. How ever would they survive frost and continue to flower when it melted? Pansies were not fashionable in Britain, a prejudice that seems ridiculous with hindsight. I am now a winter pansy fan. They have been improved and restyled. They have become Universal pansies. I can even name my city of the Universal pansy: Madrid.

All down central Madrid’s main streets Universal pansies have been bedded by the thousand. In flower they look as cheerful as Spanish sun after weeks of British greyness. At home I keep most of these pansies in pots and window boxes. Garden centres still have young flowering plants on sale in boxes of six for about £4. They are my top buy to brighten December.

After a decade of pansy management I have learnt some tricks. In the acute cold spells of winter 2022-23, the small-flowered winter pansies died in window boxes. In last year’s interminable rains, the big-flowered varieties rotted too. In every other winter since 2000 they have been good or excellent. The big-flowered pansies are truly hardy and despite last year’s rain-rot, they are my top choice. The Matrix varieties are the best of those generally on sale.

Remember that the pansy plants in boxes have been grown in spongy quick-draining compost and need to be dipped in a bucket of water before being planted out. Do not try to pull out each plant by the leaf or neck from its pouch in a six-pack: the stems will be damaged, especially if the compost is still dry. Press them out from the bottom by pushing on the underside of their holder and squeezing the sides of it with your fingers. Then dip the entire root-square, compost and all, in the bucket of water until bubbles come up or the root ball feels heavy. Take it out and plant it very firmly, a crucial instruction as the soil in a pot or box will settle down lower after rain and frost. Pansies must not jump out of bed in winter.

Give the plants some liquid fertiliser every month, Phostrogen being my usual choice for the job. Be sure to take off dead flowers, a job best done with a pair of kitchen scissors as secateurs mash the thin stems. The plants will then flower right on into April. Most gardeners chuck them out and replace them in late May with summer bedding. Actually, they will flower all over again if their stems are cut back and the plants are fed. I have had winter plants flowering well in July despite being moved to make way for petunias and so forth. The only hazard, a rare one, is a fungal infection that begins by causing rounded brown spots on the leaves. Pull out any plant that shows them.

I much prefer cyclamen coum to those seductive persicums in mini pots that flop within weeks indoors

If Universal pansies excel outdoors, will they flourish indoors now that central heating is kept low by many of us? Surely small flowered ones could be happy there so long as they were watered often. On a table I am planning a pansy pyramid, to be made of a cluster of small-flowered pansies repotted from their packs into the individual pots that came with last spring’s bedding plants. A wire or ceramic frame will support them, like the pyramids of closely packed marigolds I admired two years ago in Pakistan.

They ought to outlast those tricky little cyclamen that are widely bought for display on Christmas tables in small pots. In upmarket districts of London, frost-prone varieties of cyclamen are also bedded into window boxes for immediate colour in early winter. I shudder for them, often wrongly, as London is so much warmer than my rustic garden. The cyclamen are varieties of Cyclamen persicum, a minimally hardy species that would not survive a fortnight in wintry open country.

Instead, in the rural outdoors I prize little Cyclamen coum, a rose-purple-flowered winner named after the Greek island of Cos. It is a wonder plant, hardy in Britain and able to flower from January onwards. The leaves are prettily marked or marbled and there is a white-flowered variety too. The flowers are only spoiled if spattered with mud in a winter storm. Cyclamen coum is an essential choice for a confined urban garden. It is not in leaf all year, but is excellent as an edging to a path or when dotted in the front line of a bed before a shrub. I much prefer it to those seductive persicums in mini pots that flop within weeks indoors.

Jasmines, too, come with different degrees of hardiness. Indoors, scented white-flowered pots or baskets of Jasminum polyanthum are tempting, especially when trained on semi-circles of bended wire. I find the flowers shortlived, especially in centrally heated rooms, and the green leaves quick to grow untidily off their arc of wire. I have much longer value from the hardiest and best-known jasmine, Jasminum nudiflorum. It is the yellow-flowered winter jasmine, the best one to give to a gardener as a present to last for years beyond Christmas.

This admirable shrub is not a natural climber. It likes to grow about 3ft-4ft high and then spill forwards into a low spreading bush. It is excellent on a slope or under trees in light shade where it will block out weeds. Young plants look slender but keen gardeners know that varieties which look spindly at Christmas are often the most rewarding when given space outdoors. This jasmine, at home in China, is a winter marvel, victim only of its popularity. If it had just been discovered, gardeners would be bidding keenly for it as a rare beauty.

The final two in my five have no indoor-flowering relations. I am not surprised that mahonias are featured as “magical” on the cover of this month’s RHS Garden magazine. Most of them are prickly-leaved shrubs, but their magic trumps their armoury. Varieties have proliferated as new crosses have emerged between cultivated parents, and new species continue to be found in Vietnam and elsewhere. For scent, brightness and hardiness I still rate Mahonia x media Charity and Winter Sun as the tops. They make excellent Christmas presents. Explain that they can be pruned very hard after a few years if their height of 6ft-8ft becomes too much. They grow well in light shade and in modern winters they start to flower in late November.

The fifth of my five is still showing flowers in sheltered parts of London. Choisya x dewitteana White Dazzler is a pretty evergreen, no taller than 4ft and frequently in white flower from April onwards. In town gardens, recent winters have not damaged it. Outside London, it survives best near a south or west-facing wall. As a Christmas present it looks the part. With pansies in front of it, it looks even finer.

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