In the Deep Mid-Winter
1st of January has passed quickly, as it does every year. The rain was heavy all day and is still falling now, a day later. But on the plus side, this makes it the perfect opportunity to sit down indoors, open SeeHow and start playing with some new garden design ideas – especially looking for winter and spring colourful flowering plants. This is what SeeHow is for after all!
A selection of SeeHow plantsticks which provide winter and spring colour
Like many gardeners at this time of year, I have found myself wandering around my garden over the past couple of weeks, looking at the flowerbeds for signs of the many spring bulbs that I know are planted there – somewhere! I do the same when I go out for walks, checking other gardens nearby for signs of the first green shoots appearing. There should be small drifts of snowdrops, bluebells, daffodils and tulips in my front garden that I hope will provide some successional colour through late winter into early spring. And sure enough, the snowdrops are starting to appear. I can feel this awaken an inner excitement and I can easily see why the idea of ‘Gaia’ evolved around this time. We have just passed through the Winter Solstice, which the ancients marked. New life is beginning to appear. The first buds are forming on the trees. These are signs of the annual renewal beginning – small promises of the good things to look forward to in the year ahead. Looking out of my window through the streaming rain drops at the patches of bare soil, I’m sure I will add one or two new plants – probably colourful herbaceous perennials, but right now my SeeHow plantsticks are spread across the table and I’m still considering options.
Pink chionodoxa growing in a neighbour’s garden amongst the evergreen heather
For me, there are 2 key issues that make choosing plants for a border, challenging. Firstly, there is the fact that each species of plant exists in the garden for its own period of the calendar-year. This means that a pencil sketchplan of the garden design, with circles, squiggles and star-shapes etc denoting different plants may be misleading, as for some of the time these plants may not be above the surface. This is particularly so for spring bulbs and herbaceous perennials, which disappear once their job is done. Instead of a plant, there may be bare soil, regardless of what is going on below ground. Or there may be some seedheads, old leaves or dried brown stems. To make sketchplans of planting ideas more informative in terms of the changing way the garden will look over the year, once the design is worked out in principle, one option is to put tracing paper over the top of the design to create seasonal versions of the design, showing what will actually be seen as the seasons change. Gardens are dynamic places after all. In this way, the planting / colour gaps will reveal themselves although what stage of growth a plant will be in will not be apparent. Of course the easier way to reveal planting changes / colour gaps is to use SeeHow! Lay out your plant choices using SeeHow’s illustrated plantsticks and you will immediately be able to compare the plant foliage / flower colour gaps, so you will be able to more-precisely target your new plant choices.
Persicaria is a full bodied plant with red flowering spikes on stems raised above the foliage.
The second key issue is that each plant grows in its own unique way – small, tall, bushy and spreading, dense, open etc. There may be individual colourful flower blooms like delicate Fritillaria and Aquilegia or blousy roses or perhaps masses of small colourful flowers like Erysimum and Penstemon. There are numerous variations. Multiply these two key issues by the fact that there are many thousands of different species of plants from which to choose and the potential variables are limitless.
SeeHow Volume 1 contains 140 botanical plant illustrations, each one showing the whole life of the plant
It was the above 2 issues that led me to create the first SeeHow plantsticks for my own use, so that I had ‘instant access’ to all of the necessary plant information. Turning this information into ‘pictures’ of the lives of individual plants meant that anyone, regardless of age or experience, could use SeeHow to understand what to expect from a plant – how and when. Even a child can use SeeHow! These pictures make reading gardening books less necessary.
Nepeta is another garden favourite – loved by bees and other insects too
Of course there are many other issues to be factored in, that complicate garden design still further, all of which may affect how well a plant will actually grow in any particular location. For instance, soil quality is critical. It should have the correct pH, fertility and moisture levels. The amount of sunlight the plant will receive is also vital, as is the temperature range the plant will be exposed to. And regarding these technical aspects, it has to be remembered that they may change during the year, depending on the local microclimatic conditions and weather patterns. Where I live on the north Aberdeenshire coast, 2023 has been characterised by regular very strong winds that have killed some of my plants but the same plants have survived happily in other gardens close by.
Alchemilla mollis is one of my favourites, but so far has not grown well in my garden. Nearby it is growing very well, tucked down at the foot of a tall stone wall. Again, it seems exposure to wind is the critical factor
There are a number of plants that bring welcome and reliable colour to the garden during winter and early spring. Tulips and daffodils are 2 popular plants which spread only slowly through ‘offsetting’. In other words they stay more-or-less where they are first planted, which may be what is wanted. There are also countless varieties of each to buy. However there are other commonly grow spring bulbs which have the characteristic of spreading as they establish themselves. If left to their own devices they can create wonderful naturalistic displays, blurring the edges between lawn and flowerbed or spreading amongst the stems of woody shrubs like roses. Such plants are snowdrops, crocuses, bluebells, Scilla, Leucojum and Chionodoxa. All easily grown. Also yellow Eranthis (which pairs well with snowdrops) and crimson cyclamen can be added to this list. They will create their own colourful drifts after two or three years.
A nearby graveyard where the grass is thankfully allowed to grow, full of chionodoxa, primroses and snowdrops too
Creating and maintaining a garden should mostly be a gentle process, letting the plants mature together in their own ways. As humans, by our plant choices, we are replacing natural selection normally due to wind, rain and sun, insects, birds and animals, by choosing plants mainly for aesthetic reasons and these days, to support biodiversity too. SeeHow provides plant technical information on the reverse of every illustration and also notes where a plant is particularly helpful for biodiversity. Letting plants complete their growth cycle naturally may mean accepting an untidy lawn, but in reality, this has its own beauty too. It completes the lifecycle for the plant and by us accepting it, we become part of this natural process. The following year, when we enjoy the wonderful drifts of white and blue flowers running through the grass, punctuated by the bright magenta of cyclamens here and there, we can take pleasure in knowing that we were part of the success. And biodiversity wins too!
Beautiful snowdrops and cyclamens growing through the moss
Happy garden planning in 2024.
The above Text and all Photographs are copyright of Wincenty (Wicek) Sosna. Please contact SeeHow for permission to reproduce in any way, in part or as the complete text.