Seed Capital

Resist the temptation to snip and tidy every last wayward stem, says plantsman John Hoyland. Many plants come into their own when the winter sun is low in the sky and frost rimes their almost alien seedheads

- John Hoyland

The garden designer Piet Oudolf wrote that a plant is only worth growing if it looks good when it’s dead. Behind his hyperbole is the truth that what remains of many herbaceous plants, particularly their seedheads, can be captivating and will bring beauty into the garden on the most desolate of winter days.

Few of us want to spend much time in the garden right now, but it’s cheering to stare out of the window to admire a scene created from the framework of stems and seedheads—a scene that will be enlivened when hungry birds arrive to feed on the seeds.

In the absence of flowers and colour, it’s the shape and structure of plants that become important in the winter. What has the most impact are tight groups of tall spires from plants such as verbascum, agastache, liatris, lythrum and the perennial forms of digitalis. As a contrast to these strong vertical lines, there are many plants with rounded or flat-topped seedheads.

Achilleas and sedums tend to have very dark, umbel-shaped seedheads, which are striking when seen against russet and golden grasses; many other plants have globe-shaped seedheads that vary in scale from tennis-ball-sized agapanthus and alliums to tiny Pointillist flecks of sanguisorbas. However, whether you prefer strong lines or softer shapes, the effect of a winter planting is always more impressive when plants are grown in large groups.

The most imposing seedheads are the plumes of grasses such as miscanthus, calamagrostis and pennisetum. Sometimes a silvery-grey, but, more often, a bright straw colour, they act as foils to darker plants. The movement of their supple stems can animate what is, otherwise, a very static scene. Grasses such as panicum and deschampsia have open, airy panicles, with seeds hanging from them like tiny droplets of dew.