Top 5 best winter-flowering plants for the garden

Add a bright splash of colour to gloomy winter gardens with our pick of the 5 best winter-flowering plants.

Winter flowering heathers – These are our first choice as they can cope with cold and wet and have a long flowering season, from November to March. Flowers in white and every shade of white, pink, mauve, lavender and red while varieties with orange or golden foliage are also available. They must not be allowed to dry out their first year, but after that are drought tolerant.

 

Helleborus – The Christmas Rose is one of the easiest and most rewarding garden plants to grow. Blooming in the longest and darkest months of the year when little else is available, a Christmas Rose will produce large white flowers from late Autumn up until early spring. These little gems are perfect for cottage gardens, alpine gardens and rockeries and woodland gardens.

 

Cyclamen coum and Cyclamen hederifolium add flowers and foliage to the garden in the dead of the winter months. Great for shade areas in the garden. Silvery leaves with pink or white blooms through the whole of the winter months.

 

Snowdrops are the first bulbs to emerge and bloom after winter months. Peak flowering January – March. Plant in clumps or groups or 10 – 20 + to create large white carpets which will soon reproduce.

 

 

Pansies and Violas come in a huge selection of colours. ideally planted out in the autumn months with spring flowering bulbs. These plants really show lots of colour once it gets colder and are ideal in garden borders, baskets and planters.