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Iris lazica
Iris lazica: one of spring's early arrivals. Photograph: John Glover/Alamy
Iris lazica: one of spring's early arrivals. Photograph: John Glover/Alamy

Bringing a city garden to life

This article is more than 13 years old
Even the tiniest brick-walled garden will become an urban oasis with careful and colourful spring planting

The little garden that is attached to my studio in Waterloo could not be more different from the land that we have taken on in Somerset. It is contained on all sides by walls, which divide this tiny oasis from the rush of the Westminster Bridge Road and there are no views out, save the one up to a window of watery London sky. That said, it is a place that keeps us going and through it we can feel the seasonal changes. Grey skies and the hiss of wet roads matter less when the snowdrops are spearing the ground. We have two good selections – "Magnet" and "Galatea", as there is only room for the best – and some yellow hellebores picked by hand from the excellent selection at Ashwood nursery in the Midlands.

I planned this garden to have something for every week of the year, but these first few signs of life are of particular importance. An evergreen layer forms the foundation and I have made a point of weighting the garden with foliage in the deepest moments of a British winter. Against the evergreen of Cyclamen hederifolium, Viola labradorica and epimedium we can enjoy fleeting moments caught in flower, and the interludes between the flower are rarely dull with the texture of foliage as a backdrop.

The tall, north-facing wall has been clad in Trachelospermum jasminoides, which scaled to the top last summer. Evergreen jasmine is happier on a warmer wall where it will remain clothed to the base, but with careful pruning to keep it bushy it can cushion us from the raw expanse of London brick. Though they are tiny yet and slower to get off the blocks, I have laced them with shade-loving ivies that will cover any gaps which might arise as they reach for the sun. If the trachelospermum feel stressed, either by exposure or winter drought, they will colour bronze and red in the winter. Yew and box are prone to the same behaviour if caught out by cold winter winds, but all three will green up again come the spring.

In the shade of the wall is a remarkable euphorbia called "Roundway Titan". It is bigger in all its parts than its parents, E mellifera (the honey spurge), and E stygiana, a smaller-growing shrub with strappy, emerald-green leaves. In a couple of weeks and with this early push of growth it will start to give way to sprays of rust-orange flowers, which will be at their peak by May. I grew the honey spurge in my Peckham garden where it overshot the fences, but I have no idea how this giant will grow here yet. I first saw this plant at Spinners Nursery in the New Forest, where it colours copper and orange in the winter and it is pretty hardy considering its exotic appearance, coming back from the base like a melianthus if it is felled by frost in the winter. These shrubby euphorbias can be coppiced every five years or so in late winter if you find they outgrow their position.

Daphne bholua "Darjeeling" keeps most of its foliage in winter and, as I write, the first of the flowers are perfuming the courtyard. They are the palest pink in this form, fading fast to white. They are youngsters yet but they are fast growing if they like you, reaching 6ft to 8ft – though they are skinny and can easily be squeezed into a narrow position. Sheltered from the fiercest wind and cool at the roots will emulate their Himalayan heritage, where they dwell in the foothills; but they are happy in a warm position. I have the white form here, too, a more compact grower – and plan to use it by the boot-room door in Somerset so that in the wilds of February we can be greeted with this intoxicating perfume.

The Iris unguicularis have been spearing flowers since November whenever there is a mild spell. I have the silvery blue form called "Walter Butt" and have saved the sunniest wall to make sure they have the reserves in their rhizomes to provide us with wintery delights. They like poor living, hailing from the boulder-strewn hillsides of Syria, but I have also integrated Iris lazica in the shade. This beautiful winter-flowering iris is similar in habit but happier in the cool. It provides lush, strappy evergreen foliage and the pale blue flowers will help us to make it through this home stretch to the growing season.

Email Dan at dan.pearson@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/danpearson for all his columns in one place

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