The hours of daylight in winter are frustrating short. Often the weather is bleak and inhospitable, fog, wind rain, ice and snow all conspire to make outdoor work uninviting. On such days the fireside beckons for these are times for reflection, contemplation and planning. In looking back over the year’s achievements and as important, failures, salutary lessons may be learned. Taking stock of what has been and what is can prompt positive action. This is time to consider the reshaping of beds and borders, the improvement of planting schemes, the repositioning of dominant features, the effective siting of pots and a critical appraisal of the whole garden, armed with notebook and pencil, can be most pleasurable and rewarding activity. Indoors seeds list and the new season’s catalogue are there to be pored over, favourite garden magazines reread and re-examined and even summer outings planned. With the onset of new calendar year winter sunshine, still rationed, becomes a powerful irresistible force. Outside neglected ground can be satisfactorily cleared and dug, paths made or re-laid, tool sheds tidied and existing new projects undertaken. As the year advances routine pruning gets on the way. Included at this time are fruit trees and bushes, late flowering shrubs, roses, and those clematis requiring to be hard pruned. But the winter garden is not without interest and colour. Viburnums and hamamelis provide deliciously fragrant early blooms, skimmias and hollies are bright with berry, the stems of dogwoods and willows gleam in sunlight and the ground is carpeted with first flowers. Amongst these are sparkling cyclamen, winter aconites, snowdrops, crocus and lovely miniature iris. The year moves on, the days are warmer spring is in the air.