#wintergarden
For many gardeners, winter means a break from endless garden jobs and a swift retreat indoors to sit by a fire and ponder catalogs and planting plans. But imagine a glorious winter garden of color and texture.
The idea of “putting the garden to bed” or cutting back anything that looks dead or untidy isn’t necessary and robs much of the natural character of the winter garden. It also deprives birds of seed and beneficial insects of habitat. You should pull all the old vegetable garden waste and now-dead tender plants, but don’t cut back spent perennial stalks and grasses until they are beaten down and ugly.
Plant of the Day
Sunday 3 April 2022
This cultivar of coloured stems Cornus sanguinea ‘Sifa’ (dogwood) starts greenish-yellow at the base but the finely-branched, upright stems finish as a rich red. The young growth is the most colourful and so is encouraged by pruning the old growth before bud burst in the spring.
Jill Raggett