Best plants to add a pop of winter colour to your French garden
We share the winter-flowering plants that can brighten up your garden on the greyest days
Azaleas flower from early autumn to spring; Pulmonaria has bright blue and pink flowers; Small-flowered cyclamen tend to be hardySarah Beattie / Lamyai / Shutterstock
Winter need not mean your garden is without colour and interest. With a little care and attention focused in the spots you see and use in the coldest months, your garden can give you as much pleasure as in the summer.
Buy potted bulbs like narcissus and hyacinth
Group pots by your front and back doors. You still have time to plant tulip bulbs but you can also find ready potted bulbs such as crocus, Iris reticulata, muscari, tiny narcissus and hyacinth in most supermarkets.
Although these are sold for indoor use, if you choose bulbs that are just showing green, rather than those in bud, and plant them deeper in your pot, they’ll grow and put on a show at the end of January.
Other instant colour to be found at supermarkets are bright polyanthus / primroses and pansies / violas. The range of colours is huge and it’s worth being fussy.
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You can create really lovely displays, mixing them with small shrubs in a large pot as you would with summer bedding.
Photo: Violas in pots make a colourful winter display; Credit: Lois GoBe / Shutterstock
Skimmia’s tight pink buds can be picked up in a toning polyanthus – try a frilly double or contrast with deep blues or dark purples.
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Various silver-leaved, winter hardy plants, such as Convolvulus cneorum (hardy to -9˚C as long as it’s in a pot with good drainage), will look pretty with cool lilac, mauve and white violas.
The two toned dark purple and orange look good with Ballerina or Queen of the Night tulips.
You will need to deadhead to keep a good show of flowers.
Split supermarket azaleas that are usually several small plants
In my opinion violas work better over winter than the tempting large flowered pansies. Unless you have a very sheltered spot out of the wind and rain, the velvety mixture is soon ragged and sad.
These need not be the throwaway plants you might imagine – I split and repot my primroses in April or May (after emptying the terrace pots to refill for summer. They then spend summer grouped in the shade with the hellebores, cyclamen and azaleas).
My azaleas – all from kind dinner party guest gifts – swap places with the pots of pelargoniums on the front steps. Their showy blooms stand sentinel from early autumn to spring.
Most supermarket azaleas are really several small plants, forced into flower, and crammed into a pot. Water well and leave to stand, tip the plant(s) out and gently tease apart the roots. Plant up individually in ericaceous compost (terre de bruyère).
I find they do better in terracotta pots.
Photo: Azaleas can be repotted and from early autumn to spring; Credit: Dmytro Dzhyrma / Shutterstock
Choose small-flowered cyclamen for the garden
Small-flowered cyclamen tend to be hardy. There are ones which flower in autumn/winter and some from January onwards (ivy-leaved cyclamen and cyclamen coum).
Large flowered ones are houseplants and will collapse with the first frost – they don’t like it too hot either and are fussy about draughts.
Garden cyclamen, if happy, will carpet areas under trees and shrubs, all but disappearing in summer and re-emerging as the weather cools and the days shorten.
Cornus in cherry red and fluorescent orange
Cornus are grown for their bare stems so you can underplant with cyclamen.
Avoid a colour clash – maybe the fluorescent orange is not the best choice with pale pink cyclamen but would look good with a carpet of blue or white scilla.
Cornus stems look like smart Bond Street leather in lush citrus shades of orange, lime and lemon – smooth with a rich depth of colour. You can also find cherry reds and olives.
Prune almost to the ground each late spring to force a new flush of straight stems for winter colour.
You may associate clematis with spring and summer but there are fabulous winter flowering ones. My favourite – first seen in North Yorkshire but now thriving in Gascony – is Clematis cirrhosa Wisley Cream.
Masses of rich cream flowers nod in any breeze, giving off a perfume on warmer days. There’s even a white-flowered one called Jingle Bells for a very Christmasy feel.
It associates well with the large flowered hellebores, commonly known as Christmas Roses.
Photo: Hellebores or Christmas Roses flower in winter; Credit: a9photo / Shutterstock
Hellebores are now available in all shades of pink from the very palest through to deepest maroon which is almost black.
The newest, and priciest, colour is a delicate yellow, so pretty with fresh greens.
There are, as with Clematis cirrhosa, beautiful freckled flowers, speckled with purples or pinks.
Pulmonaria in electric blue or bright pink
Pulmonaria has silver splashed leaves and you can find it growing wild on woodland edges but it’s a good garden flower with a mix of bright blue and pink blooms.
If you would rather have a single colour, choose Pulmonaria Blue Ensign or EB Anderson for an electric blue flash of colour, P. Ice Ball or Sissinghurt for whites, P. Rubra for reds or P. Victoria Brooch or P. Shrimps on the Barbie for bright pinks.
Scented shrub flowers in February
Chimonanthus praecox or Wintersweet blooms in February with dainty yellow flowers and a gorgeous perfume which can fill that part of your garden for a month.
If the weather is inclement, cut stems to scent your room. Otherwise known as Japanese Allspice, it makes a large shrub about 2m x 3m.
Emblem of the South of France, mimosas will often be in flower in January and February too. Their fuzzy pompoms on ferny branches were cut and exported to florists in London to bring a touch of spring sunshine in winter gloom.
Mimosas can’t cope with too hard a frost particularly if their roots are wet.
Viburnum Bodnantense, however, is tough as those proverbial boots and will give you pretty pink colour all winter long.
