Updated on December 14th, 2025 Posted In: Garden Trends & Design
Author: Alexandra Campbell

10 creative ways to improve your winter garden

A winter garden can really lift your spirits when you look outside.

It’s too easy to let a garden become a bit of a dumping ground between November and February.

But go outside one morning early. Look at how light catches the bark of a silver birch, or the frost outlines dying seedheads. It will show you how winter gardens can be as beautiful as a summer garden – but in a different way.

The sculptural outlines of beautifully pruned trees plus the blaze of cornus stems – texture and shape in the winter gardens at RHS Wisley.

Gardens used to be able to snooze through winter, but today’s glass kitchen extensions, massive glass sliding doors and huge picture windows mean your garden is on show all year round.

Sometimes a winter garden is as simple as leaving the clear-up until early spring. Many plants have seedheads or structure that will look beautiful in the winter light. Here are some of the plants that I leave in autumn. It doesn’t give me a perfect winter garden but it is definitely more interesting than an empty border.

But to get the real insider info, I went to RHS Hyde Hall to talk to garden manager, Andrew Hellman, about their winter garden.

RHS Hyde Hall in Essex in November. It’s a garden with year round interest.

What Will Still Look Good in Winter?

When I visited RHS Hyde Hall, I wasn’t entirely sure what a ‘winter garden’ was. I imagined something with lots of evergreen trees and topiary, which would make crisp frosted outlines on freezing winter mornings.

To my surprise, there wasn’t an evergreen tree or a topiarised shrub in sight.

‘A winter garden is all about the light,’ explained Andrew. He advises you to look out of your window (or your glass bi-fold doors). Observe where the sunlight falls over the day, and plan appropriately.

‘There’s a wonderful slanting sunlight in the winter,’ he says. ‘Some plants, such as grasses, look wonderful when they’re backlit. Others, such as cornus, look best when the sun is shining on them.’

Cornus look best when the sun shines on them, but grasses sing with the light behind them

As today’s ‘winter gardens’ are close to the house, where they can be seen, it’s essential to choose plants which look good in more than one season.

Andrew’s Winter Garden Structure

• Shrubs with good winter stem colour, such as cornus. See Brilliant Plants for Vibrant Winter Colour & Scent.
• Trees which reveal beautiful bark when they drop their leaves or ‘hold on’ to their fruit well.
• Herbaceous plants that hold their shape even when their colour is gone. This includes grasses and plants such as salvias, echinacea, sedum, phlomis and thalictrum.
• Shrubs with good berries, such as callicarpa or scent, such as daphne or viburnum. See 12 Top Scented Plants For Year Round Fragrance

The Best Trees for a Winter Garden

Fruit trees are good for smaller gardens because they don’t grow too big.

Choose trees with spring blossom and autumn colour or ones that hang onto fruits and berries for a long time.

At RHS Hyde Hall, they choose crab apples that hold their fruit, although Andrew admits that he forgot about this factor in his own garden. ‘I planted a crab apple, waited a few years for it to fruit, and then realised it wasn’t good at holding onto it.’ It’s nice to know that even the experts can get it wrong.

Malus ‘Gorgeous’ living up to its name at RHS Hyde Hall. Choose a crab apple that ‘holds onto’ its fruit for longer during the winter.

So he suggests malus ‘Adirondack’ or the slightly larger malus ‘Gorgeous’, which was looking particularly lovely during my visit to Hyde Hall. Both have masses of white flowers in spring, and long-lasting colourful fruit.

See here for how to choose the best tree for a smaller garden here.

Add Texture to a Winter Garden: Trees With Beautiful Bark

Trees don’t have to keep their leaves to be beautiful. Andrew is planting a range of trees for their bark in the Hyde Hall winter garden. These include the ghostly grey Gingko biloba (see below) and a golden-barked Prunus Maackii ‘Amber Beauty’ (see the video for a view of its golden polished trunk).

The ghostly texture of gingko biloba without its leaves at Hyde Hall.

Trees with good winter bark include this ornamental cherry (Prunus serrula), silver birch, river birch and acer griseum.

See this post to help you choose the right tree for your garden.

Top Shrubs for a Winter Garden

For scent, Andrew suggests that you tuck a sarcococca confusa or Christmas box in somewhere. It’s an evergreen, and has the most glorious white flowers and winter scent.

Cornus sanguinea ‘Anny’s Winter Orange’ – recommend by Andrew for its intense winter colour.

Cornus, of course, reigns supreme when it comes to winter stem colour. Andrew advises you to place it where the sun will fall on the stems – which will make their colour richer. His recommended favourite is Anny’s Winter Orange.

Another good winter shrub is hamamelis, or witch hazel. It comes in glorious shades of yellow, orange and pink.

Andrew also recommends callicarpa ‘Profusion’ as another good shrub for the middle-sized winter garden. It has pale lilac flowers in early summer and incredible purple berries in autumn and winter. ‘They look as if someone had glued cake decorations onto the plant’, says Andrew. Its bronze spring foliage is sought-after for flower arrangements.

Callicarpa ‘Profusion’ has stunning winter berries. A striking addition to any winter garden.

Callicarpas have been difficult to grow in the past, because they’ve needed several plants grown together in order to fruit. However, ‘Profusion’ has an RHS Order of Merit and can be grown on its own.

Callicarpa berries – it has pale lilac flowers in spring.

See 8 Easy-Care Shrubs for Beautiful Blossom.

Movement and Drama Replace Colour in a Winter Garden

Grasses give a winter garden structure and movement. Andrew recommends Panicum ‘North Wind’ – it’s a large grass but is very columnar, so it doesn’t take up too much space. It’s very structural and has good autumn colour that fades to brown. It’ll go on looking good until you decide to clip it down in spring.’

Panicum ‘North Wind’ will turn a richer colour as the winter progresses.

For more beautiful grasses, see 7 Brilliant Ornamental Grasses to Give Your Borders Light & Movement.

Contrast shapes by placing verticals like grasses with low, spreading rounded flower heads. Sedum makes a great contrast to the vertical grasses and spires. Sedum ‘Matrona’ is one of the latest-flowering plants – ‘on a fine day, it’s swarming with pollinating insects,’ says Andrew.

Hylotelephium (formerly sedum) ‘Matrona’ at Hyde Hall, halfway between its late summer ruby red and winter dark brown.

It’s also ‘a winner for a long season of colour. It starts as a rich red and fades to a dark brown, while remaining very structural. ‘

Perennial or prairie garden planting relies on shape and contrast rather than colour, as explained by garden designer Michael McCoy.  He specialises in naturalistic planting, which is based on groups of perennial plants that grow well in your area.

It’s a look made famous by the High Line in New York and other Piet Oudolf planting designs.

Plant in large groups and repeat throughout the border, says Michael. Put three different groupings of plants together in contrasting shapes. For example, the tall spires of foxgloves with the daisy-like heads of echinacea or asters. Plant a rounded shape, such as ornamental grasses alongside.

Naturalistic planting looks good in winter gardens because the shape and structure of the plants remain throughout winter.

Both Andrew and Michael point out that when colour is subdued, then it’s particularly important to have a contrast of shape.

So, for the browns and greys of winter, mix tall spires with lower, more rounded plants.

Grasses and sedum can be a good combination. Andrew recommends Perovskia ‘Blue Spire’ for its lilac spires in summer and ghostly pale winter verticals.

More tips from Michael McCoy in Naturalistic Planting Design – How to Get It Right for Your Garden.

And don’t miss one of the newest Piet Oudolf gardens – 5 Lessons in Planting Style from the Oudolf Landscape at RHS Wisley.

Plant for Summer Colour and Winter Structure

Some plants hold their shape and flower or seed heads over the winter.  They add good summer colour, then fade to brown.

These include symphotricum (formerly aster), phlomis russeliana and echinacea. Andrew recommends Echinacea ‘Pallida’ (pale purple coneflower) as a more unusual version, which looks delicate but is actually tougher than some other cultivars.

This symphotricum has a pretty blue flower in late summer and autumn.

The same symphyotricum, now adding texture and shape to a winter garden.

See the 20 Best Plants for Seedheads – Beauty, Wildlife & Less Work in the Garden.

You may wonder when the seedheads and grasses start to collapse and look messy rather than structural. They will slowly collapse over the winter, so it’s up to you when you decide you want to finally clear them away.

However don’t always throw away or compost the dead plant material. Invertebrates may be sheltering in the stems. At the Horniman Museum & Gardens, Head of Horticulture, Errol Fernandes ties the remaining grasses and seedheads to posts. It looks ornamental and the birds can take material for their nests. And it gives ladybirds and other insects a chance to go on sheltering until the warm weather comes. See more about this in Growing the Future.

I didn’t see a single hydrangea at Hyde Hall, but I felt they deserve a mention in any post on winter gardens. Personally I love hydrangeas most in winter, especially when their dried flowers heads are iced with snow. I also think hydrangeas work particularly well in pots or against walls, so they suit more urban gardens than Hyde Hall.

For expert tips on choosing and planting hydrangeas, see Everything You Need to Know About Growing Hydrangeas.

My friend Emma’s black-stemmed hydrangea in August.

The tall, columnar Panicum ‘North Wind’ contrasting with low, large-leafed bergenia.

Think About Early Spring Colour

Just as the late flowering plants feed pollinating insects towards the end of the year, a good winter garden will be a source of nectar for early pollinators. Andrew recommends bergenia, which flowers in early March and keeps its shape throughout the year. ‘It’s good for filling gaps at the edge of a border or to line a path,’ he says.

In my experience, bergenia often starts flowering much earlier – even in December. Hellebores (Christmas roses) are beautiful winter flowering plants, too.

Of course, snowdrops are a classic choice for early spring. They’re such a pretty, hopeful flower and need virtually no care. Plant them ‘in the green’ in early spring, when they still have their leaves on.

Plants that flower in winter include cyclamen, snowdrops and aconites, see here at Doddington Place Gardens in Kent.

See Where & How to Plant Snowdrops in Your Garden.

Some daffodils are also very early flowering. See How to Grow Daffodils in Your Garden.

For Winter Garden Smartness – Tidy the Edges

We are all now advised to leave piles of fallen leaves or debris in beds, and not to be too tidy over winter. It helps wildlife and allows leaves to rot down, restoring their nutrients to the soil. It also saves time.

However, Andrew says that if you neaten the edges of borders, the garden will look much better.

If your weather is consistently above 5C, you’ll probably find that your lawn grass grows. Mow it a few times during winter on a fairly high blade, and neaten the edges. It’ll make the garden look so much better.

A border at Hyde Hall, with its neat edges. Verbena bonariensis is another good plant for summer flowers and winter structure.

The Winter Garden at RHS Hyde Hall in Essex opened to the public in 2018, to ‘celebrate seasonal change’ and to show that your garden can look good throughout the year.

You can also find winter gardens at other RHS gardens, all of which have specialist winter areas or displays.

A glowing display of cornus in winter at RHS Wisley.

Use pots for colour near the house

Winter pots and window boxes give you flower colour near the house. Here is advice on how to plant a winter window box, plus some really useful tips on planting winter pots.

And there is more inspiration in 12 top plants for a brilliant winter container display.

Jane Beedle created these winter window boxes. Her top tip is ‘no more than three colours – and don’t forget that green or blue foliage is a colour.’

Practical winter garden tips

Light levels are different in winter. When trees lose their leaves, the planting near or under them may get much more light.  This makes the perfect place to plant bulbs because the leaves will finally be back on the trees around May, which gives the bulbs enough light to flourish in the early months of the year.

See Where to Plant Spring Bulbs.

And on the other hand, the sun is lower so areas of your garden may get less sun if they’re already north-facing borders or behind a high wall or building.

Winter is a good time to take time off from the garden, but if you enjoy being outside, there are some good winter gardening tips here.

If you get a bout of warmer weather followed by a freeze, then plants can start to grow. Then the new growth gets hit by the freeze. If this happens, see this post on how to deal with winter damaged shrubs.

Two different winter garden looks. Top shows Gravetye Manor Hotel & Gardens in a frost, showing seedheads. The pic above is my garden, where evergreen topiary trees and shrubs are covered in snow.

Pin to remember winter garden planting tips

And see here for a free weekly email with more tips and inspiration for your garden. You can also see some beautiful gardens on the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel, where you can see more of the gardens featured here.