Winter scent to lift your mood
One of the nicest elements of winter flowering plants is the scent. Winter flowers tend to have a particularly powerful perfume as they have to work harder to attract the few pollinating insects around at this time of year. To get the maximum benefit, place scented plants by the house, near a door, along garden paths or in the front garden so you can enjoy the relaxing perfume as you pass.
There’s a fabulous array of plants and shrubs with fragrance at this time of year. Here are a few to try:
Hamamelis (Witch Hazel) is a stunning shrub for winter with yellow and orange flowers with spidery petals along its bare branches. It resembles a small tree in habit, eventually reaching around 4m. It’s beautiful underplanted with snowdrops and cyclamen. Hamamelis Hollis is a strongly perfumed yellow variety.
Mahonia with its spiky, leathery leaves has pale yellow flowers that have a delicate scent. In early spring the flowers give way to blue-black berries.
Winter flowering daphnes such as Daphne odora with its delicate clusters of pale pink flowers will give you a lift on a cold day. And Edgeworthia, closely related to daphnes, has clusters of scented yellow flowers on bare stems in winter, for some serious wow factor!
Sweet box Sarcococca, a compact shrub with neat evergreen foliage and a mass of pungent honey-sweet creamy flowers in winter and early spring is a must.
Winter-scented viburnum such as V. bodnantense and closely-related Viburnum farreri both have clusters of sweet-smelling flowers on bare stems, from October through to early spring. Wonderful.
Chimonanthus praecox ‘Luteus’ produces an intoxicating scent. This can be trained against a wall – south facing aspects will encourage the yellow flowers to bud for a lovely scent that will waft around the garden.
Winter flowering honey suckle such as Lonicera purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’ has sweetly perfumed creamy-white flowers to keep the blues away.
Space out your strongly smelling shrubs so that they don’t overpower each other and add layers elsewhere with bulbs such as bright purple blue Iris unguicularis ‘Mary Barnard’ which has a delicate fragrance.