A few strategically-placed containers can offer enough colour to keep our spirits up during the coming dim and chill months, writes Jane Powers
I WAS AT A FRIEND'S house the other day, and at her hall door she had placed a big basket filled with pots of pale cyclamen. It was a simple thing, but the crowds of little upturned petals were especially welcoming, like a miniature flotilla of pastel sailboats sent out to greet the visitor.
We're entering the season when there is less and less happening in the garden proper. If you have a large enough space, you can brighten the dull days with winter bloomers and berries in your borders. But in many small gardens there is room for only a shrub or two, and it may be that they don't have much to offer at this time of the year. If that's the case, a few strategically-placed containers (by the front door or at the entrance to the garden) can offer enough colour to keep our spirits up during the coming dim and chill months. Cyclamen are among my favourite flowers for winter interest: their calligraphic shapes are so pure and pleasing, and some of the paler kinds are gorgeously scented.
The individual flowers last for days, and if they are snipped off when they fade, the plants go on for months.
Cyclamen are winsomely attractive on their own, but they also look well nestling at the feet of other containerised plants such as dwarf conifers and sculpted box or bay. Add some trailing ivy or periwinkle, and you have a well-formed and long-lasting winter display. Instead of cyclamen, you might use polyanthus-type primulas, or pansies. Just remember that large petalled flowers, such as the winter-flowering Universal pansies, are more prone to being blemished or beaten up by the weather. Accordingly, position your containers in a sheltered area, if possible. Small flowered pansies or violas may give better value, as they are less prone to damage, and are more prolific. Their heads are less weighty and less disposed to flopping or breaking. And because pansies and violas swivel their heads to face the light, the more bountiful miniature ones are more likely to give you that cheering effect of a crowd of happy-faced flowers, all beaming in the same direction.
Speaking of light: we won't be having a lot of it over the next few months, so containers of plants are one way of bringing a bit of artificial illumination into the garden. And variegated shrubs - about which I usually get slightly uppity and dismissive - really come into their own when used as splashes of light in a container arrangement.
Evergreen Euonymus fortuneii cultivars, such as the cream-and-green 'Emerald Gaiety' and the yellow-and-green 'Emerald 'n' Gold', can bring life to a dark garden, when combined with sympathetic foliage and flower in a pot. The colour of the variegation (the white, cream or yellow markings on the leaves) is all-important when you are choosing pot-mates for a stripy or spotty plant. Bear in mind that it contributes as much to a colour scheme as the pigment of the flowers. And be very wary of using more than a single variegated plant in a container. If you must, then don't mix whitish with yellowish variegations. Neither will look right, and the effect will be dizzying rather than dazzling.
Winter berries also add a touch of liveliness to potted fusions of plants. Consider shrubs such as Skimmia japonica subsp. reevesiana, Ruscus aculeatus, Gaultheria mucronata and Nandina domestica: these bear fruits on small specimens. One Nandina that doesn't produce flowers or fruit is the compact 'Fire Power'. Its lime-green leaves, however, change to a rich red in chilly weather. Brian Wood, of Murphy and Wood Garden Centre (who kindly created the containers pictured here), has used it effectively to heat up a potted winter medley.
Obviously, one can't keep most of the aforementioned shrubs imprisoned in containers indefinitely, so they should be re-homed in the garden after a couple of years. Variegated specimens should be tactfully placed where they don't fight with other plants.
Coloured stems - including the pencil-slim, red, yellow or orange dogwoods and willows - are perfect for adding laser-like shafts of light to winter pots. You can poke individual stems into the compost wherever you think they look best. Some will even form roots over the next few months, and propagate themselves with no extra effort on your part. jpowers@irish-times.ie