With temperatures below zero and many of us seeing snow in the UK this month, there are only a few flowers hardy and brave enough to bloom at this time of year.
And one of them is the winter-flowering pansy.
I adore these cheerful little flowers, which as long as your deadhead regularly, come back again and again.
A perfect place to grow them is on a window sill where you can admire from inside a warm home. Simply plant them up either in individual pots or in a window box.
Alternatively, you could plant them in borders beneath taller shrubs to add a pop of colour.
The name pansy comes from the French verb penser, which means ‘to think’. Apparently, people once believed that the pansy, with its head hanging down, resembled a face deep in thought!
The blooms are flattish with five petals and come in a wonderful range of colours, patterns and colour combinations.
Popular winter-flowering pansy varieties include Matrix Sangria and Matrix Butterfly.
Pansies are a bit like sunflowers in that they like to follow the sun throughout the day. So, try and plant them where you look at them with the sun behind you. Then the flowers will face you.
They’re available in many garden centres at the moment. So why not pop down to your local centre this weekend and buy some for your garden?
P.S. Be careful not to mix pansies up with violas. Pansies produce fewer, but larger flowers compared to violas which have dainty smaller blooms.
(Images : Flickr – Dankiny/Beadmobile/Beadmobile/Cygnus921/Vpickering)
Thanks for reading!
Gorgeous photos! They really do look stunning. I have numerous pots planted up and some in my window boxes too. I saw a gorgeous window display recently where they’d planted them with heathers. Very nice combo!
Are these different from regular pansies? The ones I buy in the U.S. do well in cold weather but when it gets below freezing they wilt. Some times they perk up when the weather gets warmer again but they certainly don’t look like the ones in your picture after a freeze.