Most people love flowers. We use them in our home gardens and in larger landscapes.
But at this time of year when there aren't so many to choose from, our winter-flowering plants are extra special.
On these dreary short winter days, flowers can lift our mood with a splash of colour and their sweet perfume.
Catching your eye from afar in this border are masses of bright yellow flowers being produced by Mahonia oiwakensis ssp. lomariifolia and M. japonica.
Mahonias are a regal structural plant and the golden flowers are its winter crown. In contrast and bearing flowers of hot pink any little girl would love is Camellia ''Paradise Belinda''.
It flowers regularly and spectacularly in a sunny position. Although it's not a very pretty plant, the perfume of Chimonanthus praecox is so seductive, we grow it specially for that - and its timing.
Equally heady is the fragrance of the light pink Daphne bholua from Nepal. Winter jasmine, or Jasminum nudiflorum, is one of the most beautiful of winter-flowering shrubs.
The small six-petalled starry yellow flowers are carried along the flexible lengths of bright green stems.
There is more than you might think in the winter-flowering border, with flowering witch-hazels, rhododendrons, viburnums, cherries, forsythias, dogwoods and kowhai.
Marianne Groothuis is the camellia and thematic collection curator at the Dunedin Botanic Garden.
