Long-flowering shrubs

Christopher Lloyd explains which shrubs provide the longest flowering seasons throughout the year

- Christopher Llyod

THERE are many favourite flowering trees and shrubs that have a desperately short season of beauty, lasting only the inside of a week. The flowering cherries are notorious for this, yet we enjoy them so intensely in their brief glory that recollection tricks us into imagining that they are not really so ephemeral. Nonetheless, and especially in the small garden, it is the long flowerers that do us the greatest service and that we should mainly concentrate on.

Most winter-flowering shrubs have an immensely extended season, simply because the whole growth process is slowed down in the cold months. Here we find the Chinese witch hazel, the winter cherry, Mahonia japonica, the bush honeysuckle (of which Lonicera x purpusii is the best), Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’, the laurustinus (Viburnum tinus), winter jasmine and the winter heaths. These I am giving the briefest mention here, because they already, and rightly, get written about a great deal. The mahonia, for instance, is in bloom from October-April, which is a remarkable feat.

Camellias are the best value