December has been cold and icy this year, with temperatures dropping to -3C, but there have also been many clear, sunny days. The landscape looks so beautiful when it is pared down to essentials: muted soft colours of mauve, jade and russet woven across the hills and moors. The clear days enabled me to do quite a bit of work outside; I finally finished planting up the south-eastern corner of the herbaceous border with trees and shrubs and then mulched the whole area with composted bark. There is still a lot to do in terms of filling out the front of the border and reshaping the beds but at least the main structural plants are now in place.
On the warmer days, when the soil was soft, I dug in quite a lot of daffodil bulbs to naturalize at the borders of the woodland. The woods and area beside the stream are beginning to take on a new character now that many of the trees have been thinned out and cut back. With the winter sunshine already flooding through the gaps between the trees, it becomes possible to envisage the changes that next spring will bring to this part of the garden.
On the terrace, in the newly planted beds at the front, a few pale-lilac Iris unguicularis are already flowering. Some wild primroses are also in flower beneath the silver birch tree in the herbaceous border and on the bank by the drive. A single burgundy hellebore is also already in flower in the raised beds, which is quite out of season. I have bought masses of the miniature Schizostylis which has strap-like evergreen leaves and starry flowers in winter, from a woman in Cornwall through e-bay. I want to put them around the paving by the pond to give it some interest in the depths of winter when the water is frozen over. For now I will have to put them in a nursery bed while I wait for the pond to be finished. Winter flowering plants are so precious, like the gorgeously scented evergreen Sarcococca humilis which is just coming into bud below the terrace.