Got the winter blues? Hardly surprising, says George Plumptre. But don’t worry, a small detail in your garden will cheer you up and most of the rest can look after itself.

Gardening has not been for the faint–hearted during the last few weeks. That reliable feeling of moving from increasingly crisp Indian summer and autumn into the short days of winter has been literally washed away. Suddenly it really is winter and autumn hardly registered. All that time just lost.

Or so it seems. But gardens are populated by far more methodical beings than humans and rest assured, however frustrated your efforts might have been, your plants have been quietly getting on with their natural cycle. In most cases you need them more than they need you. Sobering thought.

The joy of gardening, however limited your time or enthusiasm, is that satisfaction is easy to achieve. The difference between looking out of your sitting room window over a patio bare except for puddles with leaf-stewn lawn beyond it, and looking to a view framed by two tubs or containers planted with a warm dwarf evergreen or a cluster of cheerful winter pansies, is enormous. It is also easy and immediately achievable.

So instead of letting the fact that it’s now dark when you go to work and when you get back get you down, concentrate on one or two little things you can do or buy to cheer you up in preparation for the season of good cheer. It might just be a fern for your bathroom – or it could be the satisfaction of buying a new rose bush and getting out there and digging it in. Both will be there next summer to remind you of how your plants and garden can get you over the winter blues.