A Quiet Beauty: Plants That Carry Us Through the Cold

Gardening with the RHS

Royal Horticultural Society

Hobbies, Leisure, Home & Garden

4.3 • 691 Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Oh the weather outside is frightful but there’s still plenty of wonder to be found out there. James Armitage, editor of The Plant Review, joins Gareth Richards to reflect on the quiet beauty of the resilient plants that carry us through the winter months, and on the quiet beauty of seeing familiar plants anew.We begin with writer and plantsman Phil Clayton, who tells the extraordinary story of the Wollemi pine, tracing its journey from near-extinction to gardens around the world. James then sits down with Tom Christian to discuss the remarkable diversity of the ivy family, a group of plants rich in variety and resilience, whose beauty and horticultural value are often underestimated. Finally, we meet South Korean artist Seong Weon Ahn, whose delicate paintings capture plants not only with botanical precision, but with a deep sense of presence and mood. Contributors: Phil Clayton, Tom Christian, Seong Weon Ahn Links: Subscribe to The Plant Review Host: Gareth Richards and James Armitage

Transcript

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0:00.0	Looking for the perfect gift for the garden lover in your life?
0:04.0	This Christmas, save £15 on an NHS gift membership
0:07.8	and give them unlimited visits to NHS gardens
0:10.8	and over 230 partner gardens all year round.
0:15.2	They'll enjoy reduced rate tickets and priority access to NHS shows
0:18.8	plus so much more.
0:20.9	Save £15.orghs.org.uk.
0:24.5	Our friends soon, terms and conditions apply. Winter has a way of stripping gardens back to their essentials.
0:45.3	Color fades, growth slows, and what remains has to earn its place through structure,
0:51.3	resilience, texture and a kind of quiet beauty. Yet for many gardeners,
0:57.2	winter is not an absence but a revelation. It's the season when bark, leaf, form and history
1:03.7	step forward, when plants that endure cold, darkness and time itself tell their stories most clearly.
1:16.6	This week on gardening with the RHS, we're leafing through the Winter Edition of the Plant Review to explore plants that hold the garden together through the coldest months, and the people who study, grow and interpret them.
1:23.6	Joining me, as ever, is James Armitage, editor of the Plant Review.
1:27.9	James, welcome.
1:29.0	Hello, Gareth.
1:30.1	Tell me a bit about why winter plants felt like such a rich theme for this issue.
1:35.3	Well, to be honest, I'm not one of winter's greatest fans.
1:39.0	I don't like the cold.
1:40.3	I don't like the dark.
1:42.3	It's a bit of a misery fest for me.
1:45.0	But, you know, you've got to take solace where you find it.
	...

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