Spring is just around the corner but on dull, cloudy days it can seem a long way off.

Scented winter flowering shrubs, such as Witch Hazel (Hamamelis), Sweet Box (Sarcococca) and Winter Honeysuckle (Lonicera x purpusii), keep us going through the colder and bleaker months of the year.

Another of these shrubs is Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’, which has clusters of beautifully scented pale pink flowers on its bare stems all through the winter and into early spring.

What is more, Viburnum x bodnantense is totally hardy and will grow in conditions from full sun to partial shade. The shrub grows to an eventual height of about 10 feet (3 metres).You can grow the shrub near a path, so that human visitors to the garden can smell the lovely blossom, or at the back of a border where it will add form and colour through the winter and a green backdrop in summer.

Viburnum x bodnantense is a cross of Viburnum farreri and Viburnum grandiflorum and was originally made in 1933 by Charles Lamont, the Assistant Curator at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. Lamont didn’t bother to propagate the plants but in 1934 and 1935, the same cross was done at Bodnant Garden in North Wales, resulting in the “bodnantense” in the name.

As well as ‘Dawn’ (dark pink flowers that age to white with a pink flush), there are equally good cultivars named ‘Charles Lamont‘ (larger, bright pink flowers) and ‘Deben‘ (pink flower buds open into white flowers and a more rigid growth habit).

The Viburnum x bodnantense pictured below in my mother-in-law’s garden is probably ‘Charles Lamont’.

Viburnum x bodnantense