Top ten plants for December gardens

There are many coloured stem dogwoods available to buy. This vivid, orange stemmed cultivar is one of the best for bringing bright colour into your garden on a cold winter’s day. Not only that but it’s easy to grow too. There are also many seasons of interest, with clusters of pretty white flowers in early summer and leaves that turn a gorgeous orange-yellow colour in autumn. The leaves fall to reveal those bright stems.

There is nothing more beautiful than the sight of a group of snowdrops on a cold winter’s morning. They mostly appear in abundance from February, but there are some cultivars that flower early. ‘Three Ships’ (named after the Christmas carol of the same name) is one that is often in full flower around Christmas time. Utterly joyful, but a rare one, be prepared to wait to buy them.

This slow growing tree has the most attractive chestnut brown colour peeling bark. It becomes a real stand-out feature in the garden after leaf fall in the autumn. Growing happily in full sun or part shade and a sheltered spot, it’s a wonderful addition.

Another much loved winter flowering plant is the hellebore. Like snowdrops, most cultivars don’t start to flower until the New Year. However, this pretty white flowering, low-growing variety flowers from November. Also, they make excellent cut flowers with their outward facing blooms.

If you’re looking for a low growing, easy to look after plant with winter interest, this could be the perfect choice. Pretty clusters of pink berries are produced from autumn into winter, as well as masses of small pink flowers in the summer months.

Next is another shrub that’s easy to look after. With shiny, bright red, young leaves, it’s perfect for this time of the year. It’s a very adaptable, medium size, evergreen shrub which can be grown in several ways; as a specimen, as hedging or even trained into a standard.

There’s something rather wonderful about being able to go into your garden on Christmas Day and pick berried stems of holly for the Christmas table. Although, you’d probably have to put a bag over the berries at the beginning of the month to stop the birds getting them before you! This variegated holly is a female, so will produce red berries as long as there’s a male holly growing nearby. Also, it’s very tolerant of pollution and salt deposits, making it the ideal choice for urban or coastal gardens.

A pot-grown Christmas tree in the garden is an incredibly festive addition. Not only does it look great through the year, but you can bring it into the house annually to be decorated for Christmas. Grown in the UK since Victorian times, it’s the tree people most associate with Christmas. They are easy to grow in a container, as long as you water it often so it doesn’t dry out. Keep it outside as close to Christmas as possible and, once inside, place it away from fireplaces or radiators.

This is one of the best evergreen hardy shrubs for producing glorious scent on a cold December morning. Relatively slow growing, this easy to maintain shrub is best grown near a pathway or front door to appreciate its sweet aroma fully best.

Last is a stunning, shrubby evergreen that thrives in a neutral or acidic soil. Creamy white flowers join the dark foliage in spring, then in autumn clusters of red berries are the star of the show. A good contender for containers, this is a festive addition to a winter garden.