After the bright colors of fall, the darkest days invite you to revitalize balconies and window sills and replace petunias and other wilted summer plants. In addition, the warmth of the cities allows you to enjoy various flowers even in winter. We offer you ten, with advice on how best to combine them in the most voluminous pots.

Helleborus niger
The Hellebore, ready to stand in the shade for years
Protagonists of hikes in the mountains (harvesting strictly forbidden!), Hellebore can be found in great variety in nurseries. The earliest, Helleborus niger, white, grow up to 15 centimeters; the interspecific hybrids Helleborus x glandorfensis with dense bouquets of inverted flowers in colors from green to red grow to 50 centimeters; the Helleborus orientalis, 25-40 cm high, bloom from February to May in shades of yellow to purple-black and also have double corollas like small dahlias, but directed downwards. All perennials, they need partial shade or shade and tolerate sub-zero temperatures and calcareous water. So that they last for years We don’t bury the root ball too much when transplanting, but leave flush with the ground, moisten the soil but not the foliage (this advice applies to the following plants as well) and don’t overdo summer watering, Hellebore loves dry summers. For a planter under the trees, combine them with the copper-colored fern Dryopteris erythrosora and a shrub like Sarcococca ruscifolia with a winter-scented bloom.

He is
Hebe, yellow leaves and blue flowers from Australia
Hybrids between several species from Australia and New Zealand, Hebes are small evergreen shrubs grown both for their dark green to creamy yellow variegated foliage and for their panicles of lilac to pure blue autumn flowers. Their leaves measure 1 to 7 centimeters depending on the variety; all lifting love positions near a sheltered and sunny wallsmall-leaved ones, on the other hand, withstand the cold better in the company of small conifers and broad-leaved perennials such as Bergenia.
The elegance of winter camellias
Winter flowering camellias – hybrids of Camellia sasanqua – are less well known but no less beautiful than the spring camellias, Camellia japonica, and have a very natural growth habit. Among the most interesting, ‘Plantation Pink’, with five intense pink petals and showy yellow stamens, ‘Hina Yuki’, with semi-double white crowns, ‘Yuletide’, red, delightful for Christmas. Let’s cultivate them in the partial shade or in the shade in the warmest areas, in a large pot filled with a special soil for acidic plants, or under the cedars and pines, because the needles of the conifers acidify the earth. At the base of a camellia, small-leaved ivy like ‘White Ripple’ and outdoor ferns with curly fronds like Dryopteris ‘Cristata The King’ are perfect.

Clematis cirrhosa
The companionable winter clematis
Clematis cirrhosa is an evergreen climber that clings to nets and trellises and blooms from fall to late winter to dress a visible wall in green outside French windows. The bell-shaped flowers are creamy white or yellow, but some varieties are red or mottled. He loves penumbra and the company of other climbers such as Jasminum primulinum, Rosa ‘Alberic Barbier’, Chrysojasminum floridum.

heather
The heather, a flower reminiscent of the heather
With tiny white to pink flowers and needles reminiscent of conifers, the heath is reminiscent of the northern heaths, although the very large Erica arborea is the protagonist of the Mediterranean maquis. Under this name, both common heather with autumn and spring buds and callunas, which are very similar but bloom in winter, are sold in nurseries. They all love sun and acidic loam and as perennials they are, too perfect for designing the green “backbone” of vases and flower beds for other flowers to rotate around. On the ground they can be combined with Skimmia japonica and Daphne x transatlanctica ‘Eternal Fragrance’, small shrubs with the same requirements. In small boxes, they go perfectly with mini bulb plants such as crocuses and snowdrops.

iberis
Iberis, white clouds in the middle of winter
Iberis sempervirens (whose name recalls its origin from the Iberian Peninsula) is a typical grandmother plant that is now back in fashion. It blooms from December to February and is covered with white flowers. Small bush up to 30 centimeters high, ideal for giving as a gift an evergreen tree for the planters of second country houses, combined with succulents like Sedum palmeri and small perennials like daisies. Place in winter borders around Nandina domestica and Mahonia ‘Soft Caress’.

Horned Violets
The cheerfulness of pansies and horned violets
Large-flowered pansies and horned pansies (identical to the former, but in mini format) flower in all colors except pure red from autumn to early summer and have also been available for some years as hanging varieties that protrude from window sills and cover the boxes. All need sun, good soil for flowering plants, and regular watering during the hotter hours of the day. Don’t worry if they look frozen after a freezing cold night: They will be perfect again in the first sun, but let’s not touch them because they break. Let’s combine them in two contrasting colors, such as yellow and blue, or focus on harmonies, using several adjacent shades, for example, lilac, pink and lilac. A bush to approach? Euryops winter daisy.

primroses
The primroses that anticipate spring
They are already in bud on Christmas Eve and with their bouquets among the leaves, they need no introduction. The gardeners, on the other hand, keep surprising us with new primroses. The ‘Silver Lace’ varieties, for example, have a very natural look with small flowers whose petals are edged in white: ‘Silver Lace Black’ is yellow-black. Hybrids called ‘Belarina’ on the other hand have lush corollas like small roses, which can also be cut for micro-bouquets and in some cases they are perfumed. ‘Zebra Blue’, on the other hand, has zebra leaves. There is no need to repot the primroses after purchase, just water them regularly and remove the withered holes by pulling them apart with two fingers. After flowering, we put them in a meadow or at the foot of a hedge, where they will keep us company for years. The ideal location is under deciduous trees, in the sun in winter and in the shade in summer, perhaps next to small partially shaded grasses like Carex.

Cyclamen Djix
Star and Butterfly Cyclamen
From forest cyclamen to cyclamen with a flower diameter of 8 cm, you can choose from an infinite number of intermediate colours, shapes and sizes, bearing in mind that the more compact hybrids are better at resisting the cold while the larger ones, on the other hand, tolerate the heat. Among the trendy varieties are those with fringed petals; Cyclamen with very open flowers like ‘Djix’ viewed from above in bowls on the ground they look like little stars; the ‘Indiaka’ hybrids, two-toned and open like butterflies in flight. Transplanting is not necessary, but if we want to arrange them in boxes, we leave the tuber flush with the ground so that it does not rot. We water from the saucer and fertilize once a month with a liquid fertilizer for flowers in half the dilution indicated on the label. Let’s not cut off the withered flowers, but tear them off with the whole petiole, slightly twisting the stem so that no pieces of the stem get caught on the tuber. When the summer heat comes and the cyclamen lose their leaves, we stop watering and put the pots in the shade to start watering again in September. Let’s combine them with leafy perennials like Heuchera.

ornamental cabbage
What the hell!
Have you ever seen purple cauliflower before it blooms, or kale leaves? The cabbages from the garden are also beautiful, but here we are talking about the ornamental varieties that look like big hats with a white or pink heart (attention and those blue, fluorescent yellow or orange, instead of this, painted with spray paints) and with entire or fringed leaves. They are perfect plants to feature in, in the center of a large vase, or in geometric gardens. As a precaution, let’s not put them on the window sill but in containers so that we can admire them from afar, because the leaves give off the typical smell of the vegetable when touched. In spring, before they finish their cycle, they bloom yellow.