Skimmia for winter berries & colour

With their glossy leaves and festive red berries, skimmia are made for Christmas. What’s more, these compact evergreen shrubs are a super choice for small gardens, and they grow well in containers for courtyard or balcony gardeners. If you yearn to gather your own greenery for Christmas decorations, but don’t have room for a holly, a couple of choice skimmias could be just the thing – and because they’re prickle free, making those decorations will be far less painful!

There is just one thing to bear in mind, however. Nearly all skimmia plants are either male or female, and only female plants will bear berries. Females also need a male plant nearby in order for their flowers to be pollinated and berries to form. One of the few exceptions is the self-fertile Skimmia japonica subsp. reevesiana, which bears small white flowers in spring, followed by bunches of glowing scarlet winter berries among its glossy green leaves. If you want to keep things simple, this is the skimmia to choose. It reaches around 1m tall, so it’s a good choice for a small border or can be grown in a pot, where it will remain compact.

That said, it isn’t too difficult to pair male and female skimmias together to ensure a good crop of berries. Most garden centres and online suppliers label their plants so you know. If in doubt, look for popular and readily available Skimmia japonica ‘Rubella’. A male variety, it makes a good pollination partner for a berry-bearing female variety, such as free-fruiting scarlet S. japonica ‘Nymans’ or the varieties with pearl-like white berries, such as ‘Kew White’ and ‘Wakehurst White’.

As well as helping berries form on female plants, ‘Rubella’ is worth growing in its own right for its pretty flowers. These begin to form