Winter Garden

The Witt Winter Garden at the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle is one of my favorite places to visit in late January and February. The plant collection features early-blooming shrubs, many of which are fragrant. On a nice afternoon when the sun is low in the sky the light radiates through the massed Witchhazels and the sweet scent of Sarcococca and Hamamelis fills the air.

Of course, not everything that’s blooming is a shrub. This patch of hardy cyclamen, Cyclamen coum, blooms reliably at the base of a Stewartia monadelpha every winter. I think I’ve been photographing it since 1998. Something about it keeps bringing me back, even though the patch hasn’t changed much over the years, just slowly getting bigger.

This is a great plant for the winter garden. It self-seeds without being invasive. I’ve seen it carpeting a lawn near Medford. In the summer it goes dormant, disappearing completely until the foliage re-emerges in late autumn. Plant it together with the fall-blooming cyclamen, C. hederifolium, for a longer season of bloom and contrasting foliage textures.
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February 01 2010 | Gardens and Photography | 3 Comments »