Amateur dramatics

Rosie Irving celebrates an easy-going shrub that gives so much for so little effort

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

Brilliant pops of colour from these reliable favourites

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

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

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