Winter planting for colour in the garden can bring an otherwise dormant garden to life in the depths of winter and provide unexpectedly eye catching interest.

As mentioned, the stems of Cornus or Dog wood is one way to add colour with very little effort, these can go form a light pink to a deep red and bright yellow and vibrant acid greens.  Another great winter plant and is one of my personal favourite plants, winter or not, is the Hellebore. This a herbaceous perennial which means that once planted it will keep on flowering and dying back yearly, so if treated properly will last for ever. It will flower from late January though to late spring and comes in beautiful whites both double and single, though to deep deep purples that are almost black. They are also clump forming so they will keep growing and spreading so you get a lot of bang for your buck.

The more substantial older verities of Phormium or New Zealand Phlax such as Sundowner with there long bronzy leaves which have pink and reed stripes running up though them is also good for providing that splash of much needed colour as well as giving us structure in the form a strong outline.

Other elements will also add interest, colour, form and design to any garden from winter and spring bulbs through to well placed structure planting which I will talk about in upcoming posts.  All in all, colour and form can provide as much interest in your garden in the winter as it does through the rest of year, proving that you don’t just have to put your garden to bed in the late autumn and forget about until the spring, it can considerably brighten the long winter days too.