Gardening column: January 2025

Watching bumblebees in early spring, digging up potatoes - one of life’s great adventures - or catching the scent of sweet peas on a summer’s afternoon can make your garden or outside space into a place of natural contemplation and joy.

Research carried out at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2022 identified the top three plants in the UK that are most likely to put a smile on your face as Lily of the Valley, Sweet Pea and Jasmine, so they might make good additions to your garden or containers this year.

Lily of the Valley is a great choice for shady area ground cover, but can be toxic to pets so be careful where you plant it.

A good alternative at this time of year could be the tenderly fragrant snowdrop. Galanthus ‘Atkinsii’ is one of the earliest flowering snowdrops.

Honey scented and loved by pollinators, this snowdrop flowers in January and February and is a vigorous grower with distinctive long and slender outer petals.

Each inner petal has a green, heart-shaped mark at its tip. Planting snowdrops in the green is the most successful planting method.

Simply lift snowdrop plants just after flowering and before the foliage has turned yellow and replant elsewhere.

You can buy snowdrops in the green from garden centres or online. They like well-drained soil in light shade. If you have heavy soil, add a little grit to the planting hole.

Once snowdrops are established there is no maintenance required - just let foliage die back naturally to ensure the nutrients from the leaves are returned to the bulbs and divide established clumps every few years.

Another fragrant plant that provides great ground cover and is robust enough for UK winters is thyme. A compact evergreen shrub with small aromatic leaves, thyme (Thymus) is easy to grow in a warm, sunny spot, in free-draining soil or in containers.

It’s also drought tolerant and needs little maintenance once established. Known widely as a culinary herb, thyme has been used in complementary and alternative medicine for centuries.

A thyme herbal tea infusion can help soothe sore throats and relieve coughs thanks to its anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties.