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Cyclamen: the cheeriest winter flower

Now, let’s just be clear: not all ‘winter colour’ is good. Multi-coloured primulas, pansies the colour of a disaster in the washing machine and bright blue heather all have the potential to make winter even worse than it is already. So don’t grow them.

But if you are looking for a pick-me-up at this time of the year that involves something other than bark and berries, then a carpet of cyclamen would work a treat. Note that cyclamen only really works when you grow it as a carpet. Not in weird lines in a flowerbed, not in pots, and not in windowboxes.

This is why all those other locations are rubbish compared to a carpet of cyclamen:

These plants were blooming under a group of trees at Wakehurst Place in the final week of December, when everything else looked miserable. Cyclamen en masse and naturalised are something to behold.

If you have a shady, scrappy, leafy spot in your garden, get hold of as many bulbs of Cyclamen coum as you possibly can. Plant them in autumn in a shady spot, 3cm deep, in leafmould.

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