New Year's Day flowers 2026

I have a habit of going out into the garden on New Year's Day to see what's flowering.

This year we have:

The usual suspects - winter jasmine, viburnum, sarcococca, hellebore, cyclamen coum and bedding cyclamen, buds of pieris.


The hangers-on - a few flowers left on salvias (Amistad, Pink Amistad, Blue Note, Angel wings, Viola's Darling, Dyson's Joy), a fuchsia, a knautia (one of the Melton Pastels), Aster Ezo Murasaki, a bedding rudbeckia, erigeron, feverfew, honesty, two erysimums (interestingly not Bowles Mauve - a soft yellow one and an orangey-pinky one).


The early birds - primulas (vulgaris and Wanda), arabis, campanula (one of the small ones with the unpronounceable names).

 

Lonicera fragrantissima doing their thing, sarcococca thinking about life, several hellebores which would have been beautiful if the pheasants hadn’t thought them delicious, a pink Viburnum bush, flowering well but rather tatty and one rose, Brother Cadfael. That’s it.

 

The hamamelis is starting to stir and that's it in the garden. Erigeron and a very sad looking annisodontea is flowering in the greenhouse

 

I didn't venture out but can see from the windows the following:-

Viburnum tinus, violas, cyclamen, native primroses, snowdrops, white heather, primulas.

Just a few weeks ago, I had roses in bloom. It's not such a good list as in previous years, I wonder why?

 

Winter Jasmine, Hellebore, Wallflower and Calendula.

 

Gosh, you have a lot of flowers @JennyJB. Haven't you had a frost yet?

Hardly anything here in south Norfolk. A few pansies,some white showing on the Iberis, a couple of flowers on a rockery campanula and a few purple aubretia. Also a small red bedding cyclamen, planted last year that hasn't died yet.

 

I have a Camellia continuing to show off its early flowering capabilities, to the point of being almost disrespectful to its non flowering neighbours , Erigeron, Grevillea, Violas and the remnants of Mahonia flowers turning to berries.

 

I have a yucca flowering, but I think the expected cold weather will ruin it. Also the bottle brush is still having a second go and there are lots of buds still to open. And the mahonia is dropping its flowers now.

 

We have had frost the last couple of nights and one a month or so ago, but not very heavy frosts. Up until Tuesday we had flowers on several more salvias.

It's forecast to be quite a bit colder for the next several nights so I suppose that'll see off the rest of the hangers-on.

 

My list:

• Bergenia cordifolia
• Bidens
• Chaenomeles japonica
• Choisya ternata
• Cyclamen coum
• Erigeron karvinskianus
• Geranium macrorrhizum
• Geum rivale 'Leonard's Variety'
• Hebe
• Jasminum nudiflorum
• Primula vulgaris
• Rosa x odorata 'Mutabilis'
• Rosa unknown yellow
• Rudbeckia triloba
• Salvia 'Amistad'
• Salvia rosmarinus
• Viburnum bodnantense
• Viburnum tinus

Also lots of buds on Daphne x transatlantica 'Eternal Fragrance' and many hellebores, but not a single one actually open to allow them into the count!

Pictures of most of them.

 

All these wonderful plants flowering in the dead of winter, it's lovely to see them. I've only got one flower on a white Hellebore and that's all.

 

My camellia had started flowering (two months early) but has not been enjoying the frosts. So,it is technically flowering but doesn't look good! Berberis Darwinii ('May flowering') is still putting on a good show, and there are a few primulas. I haven't spotted anything else but I would expect some snowdrops that I don't usually notice until more of them are flowering.

 

The winter jasmine is in full flower here and the sweet box in bud, but there's no sign of my snowdrops yet. Although we've had a few frosty nights I still have quite a few hangers-on - the usual suspects mostly (salvias, pelargoniums, fuchsia microphylla, feverfew). More surprising is this solitary nicotiana mutabilis (the blue ball in the background is there to help stop the pond freezing over, though visiting foxes also enjoy hoicking it out and playing with it!):



Ditto this (pink, originally) self-seeded cornflower:



This rose 'White Flower Carpet' reliably starts early and finishes late here:



Vinca minor alba, always at its most floriferous in winter, ramps over the 'wild bank' at the end of the garden and is interspersed with a variegated periwinkle which will have blue flowers later this year:


Chaenomeles 'Jet Trail' - white flowers again, it is covered with these at the moment:


Finally Hydrangea White Lanarth still has a lot of colour though strictly speaking I suppose from bracts not flowers: