Evergreen groundcover is a blessing at this quiet time of years, finds GINA PARKINSON.

INTERESTING, evergreen groundcover is a welcome sight at this time of year, in a large garden or a small one. In compact areas, wall shrubs can be extended over the ground around their feet to create a generous-seeming area of colour without losing too much planting space.

Varieties of euonymus such as fortuneii are ideal for this purpose as they respond well to pruning and shaping, and will keep their leaves in all but the most severe of winters.

In bigger gardens where evergreen specimens can be allowed to expand over a large area they will give drama to a quiet part of the year.

Last July we visited the gardens at Anglesey Abbey on the way to a holiday in Suffolk. Never mind the glorious summer we had, somehow we managed to choose the worst day for weeks on which to travel, waking to torrential rain and low temperatures that lasted throughout our journey.

Despite this the gardens looked wonderful, banks of shrubs massed along paths and spookily unexpected treats like a stand of white-trunked Himalayan silver birches unplanted with red tinged bergenia.

This idea has been filed away on my list of things to do in the garden. But looking around our garden when we got back, the idea of evergreen groundcover suggested that a large-leafed ivy that was being encouraged to grow along a rope trellis might be happier simply meandering along the ground in a spot that has proved difficult to plant.

So the long stems were unwound from their supports and pegged into the soil in as random a way as was possible. It looked pretty awful to begin with, but as time passed I stopped examining the ivy every single time I went by, and now the bed is beginning to fill out.

Soon it will be covered in a mass of heart-shaped, yellow-splashed leaves that will creep under the shrubs and up the trunk of the large fir tree that leans in from next door. No doubt in a few years it will have become an invasive problem, but for now this plant is a welcome addition.


Weekend catch-up

IT SEEMS that any month of the year is weeding time, January being no exception, and a spare half an hour outside can easily be taken up with pulling out these unwanted residents from the beds.

The upside of January weeding is the damp soil makes it easy to pull the weeds out and an area can be quickly cleared before frozen hands and feet make it necessary to escape inside again. It is also worth checking for weeds growing in the greenhouse, as the more sheltered conditions are ideal for them to grow.


In the greenhouse

WE ERECTED our first greenhouse last autumn and at the moment it is filled with a number of plants waiting to go out into the beds in spring. I am planning a revamp of some of these this year and the plants are part of the picture.

They were bought at the end of the summer when perennials are often sold off at a reduced price, which is a good way of building up stocks, especially when a large area needs to filled. The plants include hardy fuchsias, euphorbias and michaelmas daisies, all of which would cope perfectly well outside, but spending the winter in the greenhouse has given them a bit of protection even though it is unheated.

It is also very pleasant going in there on a chilly day to spend ten minutes removing dead or diseased leaves and flowers.


Gardening TV and radio

Sunday

8am, BBC Radio Humberside, The Great Outdoors. Blair Jacobs and Doug Stewart present their weekly programme with gardening phone-ins and outdoor features.

8.05am, BBC2, Monty Don’s French Gardens. Monty Don looks at how the Gallic love of food has influenced their garden designs.

9am, BBC Radio York, Julia Lewis. News and features about North Yorkshire gardens and countryside.

9am, BBC Radio Leeds, Tim Crowther and Joe Maiden. Gardening advice from the experts.

2pm, BBC R4, Gardeners’ Question Time.Matt Biggs, Christine Walkden and Matthew Wilson answer questions from an audience in Wiltshire. Chairman Eric Robson keeps order.

Monday

7pm, BBC2, Great British Garden Revival. Toby Buckland visits a fruit tree conservationist who rescues species close to extinction and meets a family in Kent who have the largest collection of different fruit varieties in the country. Meanwhile Christine Walkden is keen to revive the Victorian passion for ornamental bedding plants.

Tuesday

7pm, BBC2, Great British Garden Revival. In the final part of the series Chris Beardshaw implores us to plant herbaceous borders and visits a garden originally designed by the master of the art Gertrude Jekyll. Alys Fowler looks at how kitchen gardens can be both ornamental and productive.

Friday

3pm, BBC R4, Gardeners’ Question Time. Chairman Eric Robson and his team of gardening experts are in Lancashire where they take questions from an audience of horticultural students at Myerscough College in Bilsborrow. With Chris Beardshaw, Pippa Greenwood and Christine Walkden.