What a difference a day makes

On snow

What a difference a day makes

If you’ve ever taken a walk just after the skies have dumped a massive load of snow, you’ll know how your landmarks vanish. That dip further along the road? Gone. The house with the clay tile roof ? No longer visible. As well as wiping away man-made black roads and uneven lawns in various shades of murky green and winter brown, snow blurs shadows, and its whiteness renders all uniform. Anything vertical is somehow drained of the range of its day-to-day colour, all hues magically becoming tightly knit and monochromatic.

You have to be startling to stand out in snow. It’s the reason why Father Christmas looks so good in scarlet, I reckon. He just wouldn’t have had the same effect in navy blue. Here in the Winter Walk at RHS Hyde Hall, Cornus sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’ flickers orange and red, already looking properly campfire-y on a winter’s day, but when the snow falls—well, the transformation is complete. All mundane elements are erased: the path and the bare brown soil disappear, as do the surrounding masses of surface green. All are blanketed in white, and we’re left with only verticals to show us the way.

This is the job that a massed planting of cornus was born to do. Unexciting when in leaf, boy do dogwoods justify their existence in any garden come wintertime. The monochromes of nearby trees fade and crack black and brown, while oranges, reds, and the merest suggestion of lime all come through the dogwoods’ stems, standing out against the absence of colour which would, without these sparks, appear eerie. No ghostliness here, though. Just oohs and aahs at the winter magic.

I’m LOVING your snowy/frosty photos over on the Chat - if you haven’t added yours yet, come and join us