Plant A Winter Garden With Violets

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Violet. Few words are quite as evocative – a colour, a gloriously old-fashioned girl’s name, and a flower with shrinking reputation but a fragrance few can ignore. Sweet violet (Viola odorata), also known as English violet, is named for its aromatic flowers and grows naturally in Europe, Africa and Asia. Although around 500 annual and perennial species occur worldwide, few are common to Australian gardeners and only six are native.

Violets produce their flowers in late winter and early spring, bringing sweetness and brightness to a (sometimes) drab time of year.

Growing Conditions

Viola Odorata

Violets prefer good soil, some shade and adequate moisture, responding well to autumn planting as long as they are watered well through dry periods. Plants are perennial and while they may start life in a small way from pots or divisions from a friend’s garden, they can quickly spread by seed and runners. Violets make a hardy ground-cover under trees, can edge garden beds and be used as a foil against the mulch flicking of pesky blackbirds.

Their invasive habit needs to be watched. Manage them by removing unwanted plants after you have enjoyed the flowers in winter and spring. The single purple-flowered types are harder to control, but there are many lovely white, pale blue, pink or double-formed flowers now available that have a more compact and controlled growth habit. There is also an Australian bred cultivar, ‘Crepuscule’, with soft orange flowers similar to the rose of the same name.

Popular Violets

A Swathe of Gorgeous Pansies

Heartsease (Viola tricolor) is an annual violet named for its trilogy of purple-blue, yellow and white flowers. Its common name refers to its use in herbal medicine for chest complaints, although it is also known as ‘Johnny Jump Up’, perhaps because it pops up in the garden quickly after self-seeding.

There are many colourful but un-named variations to the yellow and blue highlights, such as orange and black and various blues, which make for wonderful colour in the garden from autumn to spring, and look gorgeous as feature plants in terracotta pots or grouped in the garden.

Heartsease and its larger flowered friends are commonly referred to as pansies. Larger flowered pansies have colourful ‘faces’ that brighten a dull doorstep or garden table clumped together in an attractive pot or bowl. Large flowers occur in a wider range of colours including a striking black. Best planted in autumn as seedlings or small potted plants, they flower in winter and spring until weather becomes too hot.

The other violet that is well-worth growing is the diminutive native violet, Viola hederacea. These delightful small clumping and spreading plants grow in all states, flowering for most of the year with delicate white and purple faces on slender stalks. These flowers are also edible.

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