Peter Dowdall: Why every moment spent in a winter garden is precious 

Fewer daylight hours mean fewer chores, but that's not the only reason Peter Dowdall loves this season 

There is a much softer, quieter and more subtle beauty about the garden at this time of year, says Peter Dowdall. Picture: iStock

As we head towards Christmas, the garden looks to be fast asleep. There is a lovely calmness about our outdoor spaces at this time of year, and the gardens provide a welcome place of solace and quietness away from the hustle and excitement, which seems to become more and more frantic each year.

Trees are standing with their naked stems, some festooned with lights and more left to their own beauty.

They stand in our gardens at this time of year as if they are taking a break from all the work that they do during the spring and summer months, cleaning our air and giving us fresh oxygen, and in many ways that is exactly what they are doing — taking a time-out before the rising temperatures and increased daylight hours in the spring trigger the magic once more.

There is a much softer, quieter, and more subtle beauty about the garden at this time of year. We get to admire the intricate structures of the masses of small stems and branches of the Birch with its beautiful silver bark, and the far more open habit with fatter branches of trees such as mountain ash.

Beneath them, evergreens such as hollies, camellias, conifers, and others have a dense presence which is more visible now that there is less distraction of summer flowers and frivolity, Their evergreen density brings weight and consistency to the garden.

It’s hard to beat an evergreen holly or thuja hedge or specimen plant mixed with the winter brown foliage of beech. It’s such a striking contrast and, in many ways, sums up what winter beauty is all about. 

It’s hard to beat an evergreen holly in the winter. File picture

It’s not about pots brimming over with colour and bedding displays to stop us in our tracks, no, it is more restful, more calming than that, appreciating the “mists and mellow fruitfulness”.

Plants with berries such as skimmia holly, pernettya, callicarpa, cotoneaster, and gaultheria, to name a few, these bring the winter sparkle to the garden like jewels in the seasonal sunlight.

Of course, they are not just for us to admire, rather they play an intricate role in the tapestry, providing food for birds and other wildlife who, in return, spread the seeds of the plant. But while they are on the plant, they are so beautiful to admire.

I love working in the garden during these months, as everything is less frenetic. Sure, there are fewer hours of daylight to spend in the garden, but the jobs are fewer too.

Less weeding and tending to summer flowering perennials to worry about, and the garden seems more forgiving too. It’s not running at full tilt, and so a job missed today can always be done tomorrow.

To sit in the garden during December is an ideal opportunity to appreciate and to embrace all that the garden is.

Listening to the birds and other animals, feeling the cold air on your face and just admiring the trees and plants offers an opportunity to reconnect and re-earth ourselves so much more than anything else I can think of.

Even the flowers which have gone well past their season and are now dead, such as hydrangeas and some of the ornamental grasses, bring their own beauty right now. I am particularly in love with two grasses in my garden this year.

The beautiful molinia Edith Dudzus, the nearly-black flower heads during the summer combined so beautifully with the mauve-coloured blooms of Verbena bonariensis in amongst a planting of buxus domes and now, during the winter, the golden colour of the grass is nearly translucent in the fading winter light, still offering that beautiful airy texture in with the dense buxus.

The regal-looking calamgrostis Karl Foerster, is standing erect at about 1.5m in height, the green foliage of the summer has changed now to a bleached, straw-coloured appearance which catches the winter sunlight and frosts so beautifully.

The calamagrostis will be one of the first of the grasses and herbaceous to spring to life with green shoots next spring, and I will cut both of these grasses back to within a few centimetres of the ground in late February to allow the fresh new growth to emerge once more. 

As Christmas week is very much a time for reflection and bringing to mind those no longer with us, I think gardens and any green spaces which provide us with the opportunity to take that time out are invaluable.

To all, no matter where you are in the world or what stage your gardening journey is at, I wish you peace, calmness, and happiness over this Christmas period.

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