Winter Flowering Shrubs

Although I am happy to contrast, seasonal English cut flower abstinence during the winter months, with the abundance in summer, it is still a pure delight to see blooms on winter flowering shrubs.  I have a 'hit list' of half a dozen said shrubs for the Foragefor cutting garden, all involving delicious scent. But as with all young shrubs, patience is called for. I am awaiting their maturation so I can cut them for the vase and bring their heady scent and beautiful blooms indoors during the leaner winter months.  For now though, I will have to admire winter flowering shrubs from afar.  Here are a few gems I have spotted and photographed this week in different locations on my daily 'toing and froing'.



The beautiful winter jasmine, with its primula like flowers and bright yellow colour, seems to belong to Easter more than a snowy January.

The silk tassel bush or Garrya elliptica. I first saw this in a neighbour’s garden and just fell in love with its pedulous silky grey tassels. The individual catkins look like inverted Japanese rain chains.

I spotted this Viburnum tinus ‘Gwenllian’ outside an auction house today.  I love any plant that has a gradation of colour on a single flowering head, in this case, white through to deep pink.  The tiny unopened buds are like lovely dusky pink ball bearings.

All three of these winter flowering shrubs are lovely and a feast for a flower starved eye but none of them are on my hit list, I need more scent than these provide, but having said that, I wouldn't say no to a small vase full of any of the above!