My pottery and garden decor shop Contained Exuberance reopens for the season on Thursday, March 1st.

It has been a relatively benign, warm winter up until this past week. The Portland Metro region has experienced colder nights in the 20s and up to 7 inches of snow depending on where you live.

Mild January weather triggered an early bloom season, by my record-keeping 2-3 weeks ahead of normal time in our garden for shrubs like witch-hazel, paperbush, and daphne.  Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Arnold Promise’ started blooming in mid-January with long-lasting, clear yellow flowers that perfume the air with delightful sweet fragrance.

Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Diane’ sports copper-red flowers. It’s fragrance is more subtle than ‘Arnold Promise’, but the flowers are to die for.

Another favorite variety that I use frequently in my garden designs is Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Jelena’. I love its coppery flowers that on closer inspection are red at the base melding with orange centers and yellow tips.

Another fragrant winter-blooming shrub that rides winter to the cusp of spring is winter honeysuckle, Lonicera fragrantissima. To my nose it offers the sweetest winter aroma. Unlike the witch-hazels which drop leaves in fall, winter honeysuckle is semi-evergreen through the winter months.

For deep, spicy pungent fragrance I’m forever a fan of wintersweet, Chimonanthus praecox. The waxy, almost translucent flowers open on bare stems in January and February. Once smelled, you will remember and lust for this shrub.

Just now Edgeworthia papyrifera (paperbush) is trying to steal the fragrance show in our garden (snow keeps getting in the way!). Sweet, softly hairy umbels of golden yellow flowers pop from buds that look like Hershey’s Kisses. The flower balls pack lots of fragrance that lure hummingbirds.