Winter skeletons
Ammi majus
Lunaria Corfu Blue
Stipa tenuissima and Willow
It’s so important to fill your borders with plants that stay intact as they die back for winter, with strong shapes and subtle colours that make the garden feel half full instead of half empty. In late summer and autumn I get fed up with mess and end up cutting back most of the fading ammi plants - something that I regret every year, when I see how their seed heads can transform the winter garden. Those perfectly formed umbrella heads stand silhouetted in the low sun, the perfect receptacle for frost or gilded spider webs. In my garden, golden grasses intertwine with seed heads that I leave intact for as long as possible, often until late winter, leaving goldfinches and other birds to balance on the stems and feast on the seeds. Tall sharp spires of Verbascum chaixii ‘Album’ contrast with plate-like sedum, and the mad pompoms of Phlomis russeliana weave in and out of tall grasses.
Phlomis and Molinia Transparent
Phlomis and Verbascum chaixii Album
Hydrangea and Symphiotrichum turbinellum
My top plants for seed heads
Ammi majus: an easy annual that I grow from seed each year. If you sow them in autumn, the plants are taller and more robust, flowering in early summer and leaving strong skeletal forms that fade to mid brown.
Lunaria Corfu Blue: this is a wonderful bushy honesty with blue-purple flowers and its seed heads are phenomenal, turning from purple-green to bronze to blonde to delicate ivory - and finally disintegrating to leave just the rim of the seed pod making wonderful sculptural shapes.
Phlomis russelliana: I grow this almost only for its seed heads, which cluster in pom pom whorls up a strong stem. Its flowers are pale yellow in late spring and early summer - nice but not the most scintillating - but the seed heads mature to a rich chocolate brown adding so much shape and texture to the winter border.
Symphiotrichum turbinellum: a fantastic aster that only finished flowering a couple of weeks ago in my garden. Still intact, its tall stems sway in the breeze, the flowers little black dots in a cloud of tawny leaves.
Hydrangea Annabelle: the gorgeous green-white flower heads fade to a golden-mink, and they will stay on the plant until spring if you don’t cut them back to decorate wreaths or make winter arrangements.
Verbascum chaixii Album: These upright spires are very dark, almost black, standing out beautifully against Stipa gigantea or Molinia Transparent. Their bobbly seed heads are textured to the touch, slightly wonky, and full of character. The only downside is that those seed heads will produce hundreds of seedlings underneath, but it’s worth it for that lovely winter silhouette.
