Long-suffering visitors to this website may remember that we gave selling hanging baskets a whirl a few years ago. We stopped because they turned out to require a lot more work than our meticulous business planning on the back of an old envelope had indicated: c’est la vie.

From that experience, we learned that there is a simple extra ingredient that many winter hanging baskets lack, the kind of thing that first-timers leave out: suitably small Spring bulbs, either dwarf varieties like Red Riding Hood Tulips or Thalia Daffodils, or naturally dinky species that make good rockery bulbs like crocuses.

The three classic ingredients of a simple container display are:

• Thriller: A centrepiece, taller than the other plants (may not be required for hanging baskets over head height)
• Filler: The mass of upright plants filling most of the container
• Spiller: Trailing plants to go around the edge and conceal the container

Dwarf spring bulbs in a winter hanging basket are like a second Filler layer, maintaining the arrangement’s season of interest well into early Spring.

Great Ingredients for Winter Hanging Baskets

Thrillers

• Hellebore
• Ornamental cabbage

Fillers

• Dwarf & Rockery Spring Bulbs
• Cyclamen
• Heuchera
• Heather
• Pansies & Violas
• Primula
• Gaultheria procumbens

Spillers

• Variegated ivy