Chimonanthus praecox - Wintersweet

Christmas flowering - Chimonanthus comes to life in the dead of winter, its bare woody stems dripping with gloriously fragrant, pendent yellow flowers that are tinged with purple in the centre. As spring approaches, the fading flowers are replaced with new, young leaves that smother the once bare branches. This deciduous shrub can be treated as a specimen plant, part of a shrub border, or trained against a sunny wall.