Your garden doesn’t have to look drab in the winter, there are plenty of plants that earn their place in the garden in the winter months.

For example, providing essential evergreen foliage and structure, having wonderfully vivid stems or even flowering gloriously during the darker months, adding a spicy or sweet fragrance. Here are a selection of my favourites:

Sweet box (Sarcococca confusa)

The sweet, honey-like scent of this evergreen shrub, stops me in my tracks every year. It cannot fail to have me sniffing the air desperately looking for where it’s hidden, so I can inhale its sweetness even deeper. Its simple glossy green leaves are ignored for most of the year, but early winter is its time to shine!

Daphne (Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata')

Another delicious scent that is sure to divert you away from your intended route. This beauty of a shrub is evergreen and has wonderfully gold edged leaves. The scent is akin to lilies which is a welcome pick-me-up in the darkness of winter.

Witch hazel (Hamamelis × intermedia 'Pallida' AGM)

This shrub sheds its leaves which means that you can admire its unusual spidery flowers which shine out on grey and dull days. There are many cultivars to choose from, Pallida has the finest sulphur yellow flowers and a wonderful warm, spicy fragrance.

Winter sweet (Chimonanthus praecox 'Grandiflorus')

No winter garden is complete without this exquisite large deciduous shrub. Its scent and its flowers timing are described in its common name, they are a wonderfully waxy yellow with a contrasting red centre. It can be found in the Walled Gardens Mixed Border, with members of the team often found close by ‘hoovering’ up its intoxicating perfume!

Winter heather (Erica carnea)

This shrub is perhaps more widely known than those already mentioned, but this shouldn’t mean it should be overlooked. It is low maintenance and flowers reliably for a prolonged period over winter and into spring, providing a much needed source of nectar for early bees.

Christmas rose (Helleborus niger)

Much loved perennial which flowers for many months. A useful plant for a shady spot, as well as cheering up the darkest day. There are an array of cultivars to choose from, covering whites, pinks and creams, single and souble flowers. In fact, they are promiscuous and will freely hybridize so you may well end up with different colours to the one that you originally bought! A top tip is to remove a lot of the foliage which can obscure the flowers. Let them be seen!

Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire')

Again the name is a giveaway and this is no hyperbole or horticultural sales pitch, this stunning shrub is a thicket of incandescent stems. They are yellow near the bottom and red-orange near their ends. Like with all shrubby dogwood, regular pruning at the end of winter ensures new growth and a constant supply of fresh colourful stems.

Ghost bramble (Rubus thibetanus)

Another wonderful plant admired for its bare stems in winter which have a white appearance that beam out in the dead of winter. It has delicate fern like leaves for the rest of the year, which are rather elegant and do not fear, it is not as rampant as our native bramble and can easily be controlled!

Sedge (Carex oshimensis 'Evergold')

Finally, I feel have to include a grass in my list, as they provide such useful structure and elegance to a border. I have plumped for an evergreen sedge that has yellow variegated leaves that seem to beam out on a winter’s day, perhaps as it is such a contrast to this darker time of year. They have long, narrow arching leaves, providing a touch of class to any border.