Bringing Winter Scent Indoors

Smell of Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’ is a December miracle!

I enjoy the challenge of this season’s gardening, and winter-flowering plants have a particular appeal. The individual blooms may not be big. Indeed, with a few exceptions such as rhododendron ‘Christmas Cheer’ and the odd early-rising camellia, they tend to be small and pale.

Yet to my mind, a garden isn’t a garden without a few sarcococca, preferably a Chimonanthus praecox and, if space, mahonia, which has a smell that takes me straight back to childhood. And scent is the striking thing: all these flowers pack a powerful pong!