Choose your winter plants with care

Let January 2010, the coldest on record, be a warning to choose your winter plants with care, advises Peter Dowdall.

WHO fears to speak of 2010? One winter, with the coldest temperatures on record, in January, and another, at the tail-end of the year. The year of two winters will be remembered for a long time, but for even longer by gardeners. It did so much damage, and wrote-off so many plants, we now mention the year in hushed tones, nearly whispering it, with a hand up to our mouth, when we refer to it.

Now, the truth be told, we had lost the run of ourselves during the 1990s and noughties, and, no, I’m not talking about the mad rush to become property developers and buy bigger cars and show off gross amounts of material possessions.