Seeds of winter joy

Your garden can be captivating during the most desolate of winters

-  John Hoyland

THE Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf wrote that a plant is only worth growing if it looks good when it is 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 even during the most desolate winter days. It is cheering to stare out 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.

Tall spires for impact

In the absence of flowers and colour, it is the shape and structure of plants that become important in the winter. The most impact is created by 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/ hylotelephiums tend to have dark, umbel-shaped seedheads, which are striking when seen against russet and golden grasses, while many other plants have globe-shaped seedheads that vary in scale from tennis-ball-sized agapanthus and alliums to tiny Pointillist flecks of sanguisorbas.

Yet 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.