Turn Your Garden Into A Winter Wonderland

From fiery stems and beautiful bark to cheery flowers and fab fragrance – embrace the season with plants to beat the gloom and add some frosted magic

- Hazel Sillver

There's something quite magical about looking out (or for that matter venturing out) into the garden on a cold and frosty morning. Leaves are dusted in white and stems stand out against the crisp sky. But even when the weather is grey and depressing, there are plants that can cheer you up. The red berries of a holly tree, for instance, can seem like a miracle, while the yellow blooms of a mahonia rarely fail to lift the spirits with their sweet fragrance.

Winter colour comes in many forms: from bright stems and bark to berries and foliage. The fantastic bamboo Phyllostachys aureosulcata f. spectabilis has golden stems and the Japanese wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius) is a fruiting wall shrub that will glow rust red in the winter sun.