Welcome to Wisley this December. Despite the short days, there’s a lot to see in the garden to lift your spirits and inspire you. There’s colour, form, scent and festive spirit to soak up.
This is a great time of year to look out for those plants that give structure to the winter scene. Hedges, both deciduous and evergreen, formal and informal, give a backbone to the garden. Holly and pyracantha may still have colourful berries and clipped beech and hornbeam retain their golden leaves, while Mahonia offers glossy green leaves and scented flowers.
Winter-flowering plants include Mahonia, Daphne bholua, Hamamelis (witch hazel), Viburnum x bodnantense, Lonicera (honeysuckle) and Sarcococca (Christmas and sweet box). These plants are all highly fragrant too, which is an added bonus.
Grasses add airiness to the garden's design. We have two main grass borders at the front of Seven Acres, and they feature prominently on the Glasshouse Borders and around the Glasshouse Lake.
Holly is incredibly versatile and decorative, its long associations with this time of year dating back to Pagan times. Look out for red, orange and yellow berries, smooth leaves, prickly leaves, green leaves and variegated leaves around the Garden. They feature in Bowles Corner behind Weather Hill Cottage, Seven Acres, Battleston Hill and the southern boundary bed of the Pinetum in particular.
Ivy also has numerous garden cultivars, with many variegated forms in white, cream or gold, with different shades of green. Leaf shapes of ivy can vary from lobed to spear-shaped to diamond-shaped in the mature form. Bowles Corner is an area where more unusual cultivars of plants grow, and here you can find some different ivies, plus curly, twisted hazel. In winter, the ivies are often surrounded by buzzing insects in search of a late nectar source.
In the Glasshouse this month you can expect to be dazzled by a display of poinsettias for Christmas in traditional red, plus cream, pink & damson. The Plant Centre is also full of these Christmas delights, along with hundreds of cyclamen and other festive plants.
Berrying plants, grasses and seedheads are important winter food sources for birds and insects. The crab apple trees in particular attract birds, though in hard winters it doesn't take long before they all get eaten! We have some bird feeders, and you can buy supplies for your own from the Wisley Plant Centre.
Though timing is unpredictable, we can expect to see witch hazels (Hamamelis), viburnums, and plenty of winter stem colour. Iris unguicularis sends up purple flowers at the top of the Rock Garden, and camellias and daphnes add splashes of colour.