Picking a Garden Posie in January

The simplest things in life often give most pleasure, and there can be few more natural joys than strolling round your garden, randomly plucking a handful of blooms for a pretty posie. There are a variety of evergreen shrubs and climbers that not only provide year round structure and shelter for wildlife, but also beautiful flowers at a lean time. A surprising number of flowers are fragrant — nature’s ploy to entice the few available pollinating insects. They include Christmas box, shrubby honeysuckle, witch hazel, wintersweet and tumbling stems of fern-leaved clematis which, added to honey-scented snowdrops, create an enchanting, long-lasting posie — only the clematis fades quickly, but cirrhosa clematis are so prolific, that dying stems are easily replaced.