Late January. Kitchen window, cup of tea, and the garden's got nothing going on whatsoever. Everything I planted for its flowers is a brown stick.
The only things still standing are the evergreens, being green at me.
Which is what most evergreens do, to be fair. You get 3 weeks of flower if you're lucky, then 49 weeks of very good behaviour.
A few are better than that. Pick carefully and you can have an evergreen in flower every single month of the year, including the 2 months when nothing else bothers trying. Mine manages it, mostly by accident, because for years I kept buying whatever was in flower at the nursery in February and planting it wherever there was a gap.
So, starting with the worst month.
Two things first
"Evergreen" on a label sometimes means semi-evergreen, which in practice means it holds its leaves most winters and drops the lot in a bad one.
Choisya and escallonia both do this after a cold, windy February. They come back. It just gives you a fright the first time.
And winter flowers are about scent. Almost none of them look like much. A sarcococca flower in January is roughly the size of a grain of rice, and you'll smell it from the other end of the garden before you spot it, which is why the good winter plants all photograph so badly.
January and February: what you smell before you see it
Sarcococca, or Christmas box, is the one I'd plant first. Put it next to a path or a back door. Not in the middle of a border, because the scent is the entire point and you need to walk past it.
Purple Gem has darker stems, Confusa is the classic, Dragons Gate is looser and taller.
The honest part: for the other 9 months it's a low mound of glossy green leaves and that's it. I don't mind. From December to March it's the best plant I own.
Daphne takes over in February. Perfume Princess is the one to get, because it flowers from February well into May, which is a long run for a daphne, and the scent is almost too much indoors.
One warning. Daphnes hate being moved and will sulk for a year or die outright, so plant it where you actually want it.
Viburnum tinus has been going since November and keeps on into April. Eve Price is the reliable one, pink buds opening white, then black berries. Rock N Rolla has variegated leaves if you want more from it in summer.
Everybody has one of these and nobody ever talks about it.
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Join the Garden ClubMarch and April belong to the camellias
Nothing else in the garden looks that expensive in March.
Lady Vansittart is the showy one, red and white flecked on the same bush and sometimes on the same flower. Silver Anniversary is a clean single white. Bonomiana is the formal double red.
Two practical things, because camellias are easy to get wrong. They want acidic soil, so if yours isn't, grow one in a pot of ericaceous compost and use rainwater when you can.
And keep it away from early morning sun, because frozen buds thawing too fast go brown and drop off. A west-facing spot or light shade suits them far better.
Pieris flowers at the same time and does a second trick. Mountain Fire has the little white lily-of-the-valley flowers plus bright red new growth right behind them, so you get 2 shows at once. Same acid soil rule.
May, and then again in September if you prune it properly
Choisya. White Dazzler is the better one, narrow leaves, masses of white starry flowers in May, and a scent somewhere between orange peel and something faintly medicinal that I like rather more than most people do. Cut it back lightly as soon as the May flowers finish and you'll usually get a second flush in September.
Sundance is the yellow-leaved version. You grow that one for the leaves. It scorches in hot afternoon sun, so give it morning light.
All summer, and escallonia barely stops
Nobody writes poems about escallonia. It flowers June to September without a break, the bees are all over it, it shrugs off coastal wind and a hard clipping, and it'll make a hedge if you want one. Apple Blossom is pale pink, Donard Seedling slightly deeper, and the red ones are deeper again.
If you've got a dry, sunny corner where things keep dying, that's where this goes.
October and November, when the rest of the garden has given up
Fatsia japonica is the one visitors stop and ask about. Spiders Web has leaves speckled white as though someone flicked a paintbrush at it, and in October it throws up odd creamy drumstick flowers, then black berries. It wants shade and shelter, and it'll fill a difficult corner nothing else will touch.
Mahonia got a bad name from the old spiny ones that scratched everybody on the way past. Soft Caress has no spines at all, soft thin leaves, yellow flowers right through the autumn. Cabaret is the pinkish-orange one and flowers later, into winter.
And then it's December again
The sarcococca buds break around the middle of December, the viburnum is already in flow, and you're back where you started. If you want to see the winter end of it in one place, start there and work backwards.
Which of these will live in a pot
Sarcococca, camellia, Fatsia Spiders Web, Mahonia Soft Caress, Choisya White Dazzler and Daphne Perfume Princess all do well in a decent-sized pot. Not under about 40cm across though, because small pots freeze solid in winter and bake dry in summer.
Escallonia I'd leave in the ground. It gets big and it resents having its roots restricted. Viburnum tinus will take a pot, but it wants a large one.
Drought in July kills more potted evergreens than frost does. They're still growing and still drinking even when they look static, and because the leaves stay on all year there's no dormant spell where they stop needing water.
The ones that flower and nobody notices
Euonymus, griselinia, photinia and common laurel all flower. Technically. The flowers are tiny, or greenish, or both.
That's fine. You grow those for the leaves and they're good at it. Just don't buy one expecting a display.
If you only plant one
Make it the sarcococca, and put it where you walk past it in January. 10 months of nothing, and then one morning in the middle of winter you'll catch the scent on your way out to the bin and understand what the fuss is about.
