I dearly love all winter flowers but with a few notable exceptions they are subtle rather than showy.

It’s true that if I turn my head and look out of the window I can see the scarlet flowers of a camellia staring in at me but most of the shrubs that light up the garden with flowers at this time of year favour parchment white or palest yellow. In the case of viburnums and daphnes the clusters of tiny flowers are tipped with the faintest blush pink. Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ has been flowering for months passing the baton on to Daphne bholua ‘Gurka’.

The spidery flowers of witch hazels favour yellow with Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Pallida’ sporting its pale yellow flowers on bare branches. H. ‘Jalena’ deviates with rust-red flowers that remind me of the waving tendrils of sea anemones in a rock pool. The winter flowering honeysuckle, Lonicera x purpusii is as pale as parchment whilst winter sweet, Chimonanthus praecox bears small, waxy straw coloured flowers with purple centres. What they all possess of course is scent for these flowers must compete for attention with the few pollinating insects that brave the cold. When I walk through the garden on a sunny day in January the scent of Sarcococca confusa, known affectionately as Christmas box, rises on the air. Yet this small evergreen with its box-like leaves bears the most self-effacing flowers of any shrub for they are a mere fringe of white rather like tiny shreds of coconut. They are so small and yet so powerfully scented that I must turn back in admiration.

There is one shrub that not only perfumes the air with a sweet, lily-of-the-valley scent and lights up the winter garden like a great yellow lantern and this is Mahonia x media ‘Charity’ pictured here. This is a back of the border shrub for you will find yourself looking up at those great lanterns for ‘Charity’ is a cross between two natives of China M. Lomariifolia and M. japonica. If you want a smaller mahonia then you must look to North America and Mahonia aquifolium. Its edible blue-black fruits have given it the common name of Oregon grape although I must admit to leaving those bitter fruits to the birds. Although the species is more compact do look for the cultivar ‘Apollo’ which is a neater shrub altogether growing to waist height and forming a neat mound, a fact that has earned it an R.H.S. Award of Garden Merit.

It still bears spiny leaves however, but there is one Mahonia whose leaves more closely resemble palm tree fronds and this is M. eurybracteata 'Sweet Winter’. Not only are they eminently stroke-able but like M. ‘Apollo’ this particular mahonia will grow into a small rounded shrub. M. eurybracteata is a native of China and much was made of its cultivar ‘Soft Caress’ which was named 'plant of the year' at the R.H.S. Chelsea Flower Show eight years ago. It is still difficult to track down however and that makes me wonder whether it as fully hardy as its spiny leaved cousins.