Our friend Midori, who until last year was the head gardener of the Tokachi Millennium Forest in Hokkaido and whose name means green, would talk about the melancholy associated with “touching green” for the last time before winter arrived. That far north they would be snowbound from late October for the winter months that we continue to garden here and do so with purpose and the spur of the garden never entirely sleeping. The silvery shoals of fattening willow catkins, the emerald green of hellebores and the promise of wintersweet and witchhazel to keep us company and provide optimism. 

Despite the woods being stripped back by the season, what you see as your eye moves through bare branches is the furnish of trunk-hugging ivy and dark holly refracting as brightly as mirrors on a bright sunny day. The lush green of the pasture in January is brighter than a dry August and it laps verdantly to hedgerows that nestle the flat, matt green of bramble. In January, our eye moves to the greens with ease and relief and a feeling that there is a hold of green to soften and foil and remind you that we are rarely without its calming influence.