November at the nursery - 2020

Now we’re approaching the darker and damper days of winter the garden can start to look a bit dull. However there are plenty of plants that can be used for Winter colour that can help brighten it up. Larger shrubs that although they lose their leaves have very colourful stems are the Dogwoods (Cornus) To maintain them for their winter stem colour in the spring they should be cut back in Spring, as the newer stems will have the strongest colour.

For flowers in the winter the shade tolerant Hellebores are a good bet, they usually have a deep green foliage most of the year and the flowers can be many different colours, look at the flowering times when buying as planting out a clump of them with various flowering times will give a longer display.

Mahonia, especially the winter sun variety will flower from November through to March, bright yellow stems of flowers in clusters make a great job of brightening up the garden. The shrub itself is evergreen and can tolerate partial shade.

Witch Hazel as well as Snowdrops and Cyclamen are also great plants for the winter

At the nursery it's rather nice not to have to water things quite so much! It was a fairly long job during the summer. We have finished all the potting on, Next year we’ll have lots of bright yellow gingers and electric blue Irises that we’re looking forward to seeing in flower. We also have a number of Oak seedlings that once they’ve lost the last of their leaves we’ll be taking out of the tray and potting on individually. Only a year old but some are 10 inches high.