Brighten up your winter; Hannah Stephenson offers some easy ways to add colour to the winter garden.

IF you're looking for colourful pots which will last a bit longer than a few short-lived pansies this winter, it's worth shopping around for evergreen and berried shrubs and grasses.

Garden centres are now awash with winter cherries (Solanum capsicastrum), bearing large bright-orange berries which look tempting but they need a sheltered spot.

A better bet would be Callicarpa bodinieri 'Profusion', a hardy shrub which produces purple berries, standing out among underplantings of ivy and winter-flowering heather.

Some shrubs last well in pots and can then be successfully grown in the garden. Skimmia 'reevesiana', a hermaphrodite with vibrant red berries, looks wonderful in pots, as does its relative S japonica 'Rubella', with its deep-red flower buds.

If you transfer skimmia from pots to your borders in spring and you want berries in future years, make sure you grow male and female plants together. 'Foremanii' is female and produces large bunches of berries, while 'Fragrans' is male and recommended for its floral fragrance.

Deep-coloured heucheras remain pretty hardy over winter, contrasting well with variegated euonymus and seasonal accent plants including cyclamen from the Miracle Series.

Viburnum tinus is another reliable evergreen. Its buds reveal a dark pink tinge, later lightening to pure white as the flowers open between late winter and early spring.

Buy a container labelled 'frost-proof' rather than 'frost-resistant', which will withstand the British weather more effectively. Line the inside with bubble-wrap to prevent compost from freezing and damaging the roots, but don't cover the drainage hole. Line the base with crocks or chunks of polystyrene to ease drainage.

Half-fill with compost. For permanent plantings of shrubs and perennials, use a soil-based compost such as John Innes No 3, which holds on to water and nutrients well while encouraging good air movement and drainage. Sit the rootball of your main plant 2.5cm below the rim.

Many people forget about grasses in the winter, but it's a time when they can come into their own in pots, adding huge architectural value and texture. And you can transplant them into your garden when winter is over.

Sculptural grasses such as Carex comans 'Bronze form' can make a striking formal feature, while tall containers look great with sword-like phormiums and sedges, mixed with the cascading foliage of carex. They are extremely low maintenance and highly visual, particularly in winter when not much else can steal the limelight.

Alternatively, use a tall grass planted in a pot on its own, such as Stipa gigantea, a densely-tufted evergreen type that'll look great on a frosty morning.

If you are a flower fan and want to make the most of winter blooms, plant up some hellebores in pots, which will provide a terrific display of foliage and flowers in late winter and early spring, in shades of white, cream, yellow, green, pink and purple through to almost black.

There's no reason that you can't have beautiful winter containers of plants which you can transfer to beds and borders at a later date to give you pleasure in years to come.

CAPTION(S):

WONDERFUL Skimmia Japonica Rubella. BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL Cyclamen Miracle , above, and Callicarpa Bodinieri 'Profusion', left.