Kitchen Garden: Box balls, standard bay trees and rose arches stand out in the January snow
Spotted laurel shines out in mid-winter, adding colour and a structure
Anglesey Abbey is an easy choice, famous for its winter walk which shows how much colour and interest January can offer.
We’re hunkered down for most of January , largely leaving the garden to its own devices.
The Kitchen Garden
The box balls, pyramids and spirals that complement the low network of hedges in the kitchen garden are an asset all year, but a snow dump turns them into a fluffy white playground.
Anglesey Abbey
Just northeast of Cambridge is the unlikely setting for Anglesey Abbey.
It was the first National Trust property to make a dedicated winter walk to extend the season and has become the template for many similar seasonal plantings, offering winter colour and scent.
The shrubs are the main providers of both with the stems of cornus, tassels of Garrya Elliptica, and early flowering viburnums and mahonias delivering.
However, there’s plenty of invention before the refreshed grove of Himalayan Silver birch stems provides the walk’s finale.
The nearly 100 acres includes parkland, woodland, a lake, a stretch of the river Quy and a Jacobian house (pictured). Traditional planting classics offer: a dahlia bed organised by colour, an old-fashioned rose garden and a spectacular perennial garden set in a ‘D’ backed by a beech hedge (pictured).
Frosted leaves
The crisp edges of leaves caught in a frost always seem to attract the attention of my camera on winter walks.
