Winter seed heads – for year-round garden drama
It’s tempting to imagine your garden always ablaze with summer colour, glorious for lazy days in the sun. But when the blooms have dropped, your Panama hat has been stowed away and the thermometer starts to slide, you need to be sure your garden will still have fabulous structure for winter drama.
The answer is to choose an array of plants with showstopping winter seed heads.
We have been inspired by the selection at the gardens at the Hauser and Wirth art gallery in Somerset, created by Dutch designer Piet Oudolf.
Piet specialises in naturalistic planting, and says: “I try to find beauty in things that on first sight are not beautiful.”
Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth Somerset
“a pioneering influence in perennial planting design, encouraging us to study and appreciate the full lifecycle of a perennial plant, including its demise in autumn and winter”
Eye-catching shapes and textures
Seed heads come in a gorgeous range of eye-catching shapes and textures, and can be truly stunning on a sunlit misty day rimed with frost.
Stark and skeletal in form without flowers and leaves, the essential structure of these wonderful plants can provide extra visual interest against a backdrop of bare trees such as silver birch and shrubs boasting colourful winter stems.
They can also add sound as they flutter in the breeze in a crisp winter garden, as well as being a good source of food and shelter for wildlife – and an attractive accessory for an unusual Christmas wreath.
Ornamental grasses look amazing over winter, with papery, transparent seed heads glimmering in low sun, and they work brilliantly with late-flowering perennials.
Two of Piet Oudolf’s favourite winter seed heads
Baptisia australis: upright spikes of mauve to indigo summer flowers mature to seed-pods and slender stems that look sensational frosted in the winter garden.
Verconicastrum virginicum: candelabra-style tall and elegant plants offer imposing winter silhouettes.
Our Top 10 plants for attractive winter seedheads
Eryngium giganteum ‘Silver Ghost’: a biennial sea holly with silvery foliage and little cones. The seed heads bring architectural impact as well as offering food for insects and small mammals.
Phlomis russeliana: summer’s hooded yellow flowers growing at intervals on erect stems look magical when dusted with frost.
Rudbeckia maxima: these daisies are fantastic for bright summer flowers but also have cone-shaped heads bringing height and structure to a winter border. They work really well mixed in naturalistic schemes with ornamental grasses.
Hylotelephium (Herbstfreude Group) 'Herbstfreude': chunky sedums with rubber leaves are standouts in autumn, keeping their colour even when frost sets in.
Allium cristophii: allium skeletons impose well into winter, with heads like lollipops dancing on long, strong stems. You can also spray them silver or gold for Christmas decorations or pop them in a vase indoors.
Echinops bannaticus 'Taplow Blue': a globe thistle that is very popular with butterflies and bees during summer then lives on with spiky interest through the winter.
Digitalis ferruginea: a distinctive foxglove that offers towers of rusty winter drama.
Agastache 'Blackadder': whorls of tiny flowers become seed heads resembling a bottlebrush for long-lasting winter impact.
Calamagrostis x actiflora 'Karl Foerster': this fabulous ornamental grass with wheat-coloured stems and shades of buff and brown brings light and movement to a winter garden, all the more so after a sprinkling of frost.
Miscanthus sinensis 'Ferner Osten': a clump-forming, tall grass with dull orange leaves in autumn and early winter, and feathery flowers that age to pink and silver.
PS: Miscanthus sinensis ‘Kleine Fontane’ (silver grass) was also used in a densely planted border in the Totteridge garden. It looks beautiful in autumn and winter when the seed heads create a rhythm repeated throughout the garden.
Totteridge
If you want to a garden that has interest all year round, get in touch with the team here at Alaster Anderson. As plant experts, we know which species will bring the design elements you are after and which choices will thrive in your garden’s conditions.
If we can help you with your garden then please get in touch. You can reach us on 0207 305 7183 or email at enquire@alasteranderson.com
