There’s still so much colour you can add to the garden
What many see as the ‘off season’ is really a misnomer, with arguably the most colourful and interesting plants of all. One way you can add some brightness and beauty to your garden is with a rockery, with many alpines and rockery plants coming into their own now. Create your own little permanent mound or, better still, plant up a mobile feature in a wheelbarrow, which can be moved at different times of the year, for example, to a sheltered spot in autumn.
By their nature, rockery and alpine plants love well-drained spots, rocky slopes and sun, so have a go at recreating a naturalistic mini version. The plants listed below are extremely robust, standing firm through winter, many also being evergreen, and furnishing you with more flowers next spring, summer and autumn.
The plants we used: Cyclamen hederifolium, sedums ‘Rose Carpet’ and ‘Ruby Glow’, gentiana ‘Shot Silk’, scutellaria ‘Texas Rose’, rhodohypoxis ‘Claret’, plus evergreens: heather, sea thrift, Taxus baccata ‘Standishii’, juniper Icee Blue, and Pinus mugo ‘Humpy’.