The Garden Life: Winter-performing plants have limited audience

One of the easiest and most reliable groups of flowering bulbs for the winter months is the snowdrops, Galanthus nivalis and G. Gracilis. Snowdrops are versatile bulbs that will thrive in most situations. They are perfect at the foot of deciduous shrubs or trees. When they are happy with their location, they expand their territory with each new year. Galanthus are also easy to transplant. This is a job that should be done when they are in bloom, to give the gardener a chance to see instant results in a new location.

One of the brightest early bloomers is Iris reticulata Harmony. Winter iris flowers open unexpectedly, bursting from thin-bladed stems in rich purple blue with a bright yellow crest highlighting a speckled white throat. For years, I hung on to the memory of seeing an iris in bloom even earlier than I. Harmony. I knew the name of the plant, Iris unguicularis, because I had seen it listed in books of English gardens but I could not find it anywhere on the market.

One year in February, I came upon it blooming in a friend’s garden. Geof had also searched long and hard before coming upon a plant for sale and was more than willing to divide his expanding clump and let me add it to my garden. He warned me that it was not a long-blooming flower and the foliage often became tattered by winter’s end but I could see he was speaking as one would of a loyal, aged hound dog. He was right, and now the flower is worth it to me, too.

The most dramatic flower show in my winter garden came from a pair of Camellia sasanqua Kanjiro planted informally on either side of the entrance to a woodland path. This area of the garden was always a revelation because it is located in an out of the way area behind the house, situated between two shade gardens. It’s not someplace you would typically go looking for color, so the flurry of single, deep red blossoms comes as a delightful surprise. The sasanqua camellias come in all shades of white, cream, pink and coral.

As the temperature of the air and soil begins to warm up, so does the interest of less avid gardeners. They might venture over later in the month to ogle a mass planting of early daffodils emerging from a sea of creeping anemone. If they came by today, I’d take them straight over to Marilyn’s townhouse. The early-blooming camellia along her walkway is striped red and white as sweetly as a peppermint stick. Out my office window, the sun is shining and a dozen red-breasted robins are gorging on holly berries. Even if I don’t expect any visitors, I think I’ll step outside and have another look for myself.