Make this
Rather than burning or shredding prunings from winter work in the garden, repurpose them into a dead hedge instead. This will act as a fabulous windbreak, a refuge for wildlife and a way to divide areas of your plot. Bang in stakes or old fence posts in two rows 50cm apart, then slot material in between, with larger branches at the base. As you add material, it will settle over time.
Read this
Didn’t get anything decent for Christmas? Well, cheer yourself up by pre-ordering a copy of The Book Of Seeds (Ivy Press, £30), by Paul Smith, the former head of Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank. Published in February, it’s a sumptuous guide to 600 of the world’s weirdest and most beautiful species, from the black seed with hair like Donald Trump to pinhead-sized orchid seeds.
Plant this
Winter-flowering clematis is a wondrous thing: if you can offer it a sunny, sheltered spot, you’ll be rewarded by flushes of blooms from December to February. Clematis cirrhosa ‘Advent Bells’ (3m x 1.5m) and C. cirrhosa var. balearica (2.5m x 1.5m) both have creamy, scented blooms with maroon splashes, while C. cirrhosa ‘Jingle Bells’ has pure white blooms and reaches 5m x 2m.
