Below is the list of our favourite plants in the garden in the first half of January 2023. I’ve updated these pages after my first effort in 2017 since some plants (including all our Hamamelis) have died and many newish snowdrops feature. I don’t tend to repeat plants that have featured in the previous fortnight, so it’s an attempt to show how there is always something new in the garden to tempt us out, whatever the weather. In early January many of December’s stalwarts are even better now, like early snowdrops and Cyclamen coum, so do have a look at the last 2 plant palette pages from December. Spring is on its way. Well, at least that’s what all this new activity is telling us. And the nadir of late November when flowers are few and far between seems a very long time ago.

1: Daphne bholua ‘Jaqueline Postill’. This could be one of our top 12 plants for the year. Originally we’d heard about its famed perfume and found 2 scrawny plants lurking at the back of a local nursery’s polytunnel, for about a fiver apiece. We planted them in our amphitheatre area, and they sulked, so (and all the experts say you’re not meant to do this with Daphne), we moved them to 2 locations beneath the mature larch on a more South facing slope. What we didn’t know at the time was that they were on their own roots (probably originally micro-propagated). Gradually they both grew and flowered and we started to appreciate the magic perfume. In some years, like 2015 and 2023, the flowers begin to open in early December, in other years, not until mid-February. In 2022 we had a month of watching the rose lilac buds until they opened and the scent filled the air for yards away from just those very few opened buds. How powerful is that?Now there are tens of thousands of buds on shrubby thickets 8 feet tall. And better still they like our conditions so much that they run, and pop up new shoots every foot or so, rather like our native, nuisance hedgerow, wild cherries. So now we have 7 or 8 developing thickets around the garden which ensure that in most parts of the garden, whatever the wind direction, you experience that sublime scent. It’s only partially evergreen and usually sheds most of the leaves after flowering, which often continues into early April. A star plant.

2: Galanthus plicatus ‘Colossus’. Now a favourite early season snowdrop with classic plicatus folded leaf margins, and often 2 flowers per bulb, which bulks up well, once settled down. One of our ‘Twelfth Night Snowdrops’, which is reliably in flower in the first week in January – at least here!

3: Galanthus ‘Castlegar’.  Another favourite, and very early snowdrop, which doesn’t bulk up quite as fast as some others, but always catches the eye with long-lasting, very early flowers held well above the foliage for several weeks before the leaves catch up.

4: Galanthus ‘Atkinsii’. This was the snowdrop which got me going as a galanthophile. I originally bought a few from Broadleigh bulbs, grew them in a raised bed in our Bristol garden and then moved them down to Wales before we relocated permanently. They existed between the lower apple trees’ tyre pillars, and eventually, I got around to shifting them into other areas of the garden. Consistently an early snowdrop, though not now in our real vanguard, they’re tall, elegant, recover well from frosts and because they seem to be sterile, individual flowers usually last at least 6 weeks. But established clumps’ flowers last more like 2 months in most years.

This sterility issue means that to create drifts you have to be prepared to split and divide them every 3 years or so – always a wrench to do this, but given vigorous snowdrops’  insistence on multiplying at least as well as the Fibonacci progression predicts, just a few bulbs initially can become hundreds within a decade.

5: Skimmia japonica ‘Red Ruth’.  A compact upright shrub, now about 1.5 metres tall with leathery green leaves and small white flowers in early spring. Not the strongest scented Skimmia we grow, or the most attractive to honey bees. However, as a female form, it produces masses of bright red berries which the birds seem to leave alone. so they persist until the next season’s berries begin to develop. A star plant in the copse over late winter, when the masses of berries stand out against the evergreen foliage and lack of flowers.

6: Daphne bholua – un-named seedling. This is one of 3 seedlings we bought as small plants from Pan-global plants. They’re all different, but this has become a firm favourite with its very pale rose-pink flower cluster, with no hint of purple. It also seems to have many more flowers per cluster than our other D. bholua – typically 16- 20 compared with 10 – 14. It retains its leaves well and it’s also the first to flower with a gorgeous scent too. 7: Daphne bholua ‘Darjeeling’. Another lovely scented Daphne bholua, very similar to  D. ‘Jacqueline Postill’, but it tends to hang onto its leaves better after flowering and also doesn’t seem to grow quite as tall – more like 4 to 5 feet.

However being again bought, by chance, growing on its own roots, it’s also running and suckering, so in future, we should be able to have a few more plants in the garden for free.

8:Ilex x altaclerensis ‘Golden King’ AGM. This is a berry-bearing female form, confusingly called a King! We inherited a plant growing in our previous Bristol garden, and I managed to strike a cutting before we moved, and 30 years on, it’s formed a lovely plant close to the greenhouse. Like most of our hollies, I’ve clipped it into a vaguely mushroom shape, and it still rewards us with deep red berries which last well into January.

9: Galanthus ‘Shropshire Queen’. A very attractive and vigorous snowdrop cultivar, with amazing root systems – always a sign of a good-doer, if not even an extra set of chromosomes? One of our more recent snowdrops, but one of the best for quickly bulking up here. 10: Galanthus un-named double form. This was acquired a few years ago from an amazing lady Margaret Bide, who I’ve written about occasionally. She was given the bulbs by the late great galanthophile Ruby Baker, from Farnham, as a swap for some plants Ruby had spotted growing in Margaret’s front garden. It may have a name, but I don’t know it, and it’s one of our earliest and most vigorous double forms, quickly recovering after moving and forming huge clumps.

11: Ilex aquifolium ‘Ferox Argentea’ (Silver Hedgehog). AGM This lovely spikey variegated holly grows close to Golden King, and although it’s a male form with no berries, it has striking spikey foliage and small white flowers which attract honey bees and other insects when they open around May. The new stems, leaves and flower buds have an attractive purple tint.

12: Ilex aquifolium ‘Elegantissima’. I think that this is the correct name for this holly – as mentioned in my other “palette pages”, several of our hollies got moved and possibly muddled years ago before we recorded things in more detail. This is a male form, and so produces no berries, but it’s vigorous and easy for me to shape into one of my holly mushrooms, though it will take a couple more years to be how I’d like it.