February plants

Step into a magical winter garden in the Weald of Kent, where cyclamens, hellebores and crocuses add splashes of pink and purple to the white carpet of snowdrops

Mahonia x media ‘Winter Sun’ Forgive me please because I have, in my youth, been a bit sneery about mahonias. I recognise that this was a mistake as they have an awful lot in their favour: colour at a

Warm up chilly days with sizzling colour

I don’t get to walk through the 17 acres of gardens at Bressingham every day, but sometimes I am able to enjoy a walk on a frosty morning in midwinter as the sun comes up over the horizon. On a frosty

Winter is for restoration. The garden is pared back and elemental: everything is visible and in its stillness there’s time to reflect on the preceding year and to imagine and plan the year to come. Ye

FACT FILE What A genus of architectural, evergreen and predominantly spiny-leaved shrubs from the barberry family (Berberidaceae), bearing remarkably luminous, highly fragrant flowers in autumn and wi