The most gorgeous herbal hanging baskets are arranged with artistry, which I don't have. The best I've managed has been a froth of variegated mint, or 'silver posy' and other ornamental thymes surrounded by pansies or heartsease flowers, which could be considered 'herbal' as they used to be used to both slightly sweeten and to colour food in medieval times. They are edible only in the 'won't poison' you sense, as the texture is like wet paper, but they do look pretty as last-minute decoration on cakes or salads.

I've also seen delightful hanging baskets of clumped thyme or winter savoury with snowdrops or bluebells or miniature daffodils popping up around them, though the only time I tried it, it looked a mess.

Prostrate winter blooming rosemary smells gorgeous and adds depth to winter meals if used with discretion. Remove the twigs after cooking, or even just put a branch of rosemary in the oven when you bake, well, just about anything, as the faintest tang of rosemary goes well with even sweet things.

The best looking winter veg are the frilly coloured chards, which range from steel blue to pinkish red and every shade of grey and green. The leaves grow long and lanky in the garden, but if grown in a hanging basket and picked often you get shorter leaves in a glorious froth. The newer, smaller leaves are more tender, too.

This is one time it's worth buying 'bloomers'. Seeds and even seedlings will take weeks or months to bloom now, but pots already flowering will last for months, or even a year or so with good treatment. Try a froth of pansies, polyanthus, heartsease, or be extravagant with cyclamen - flagrant pinks all winter.

The trick to keeping flowers producing all winter is to give warmth near a sunny, heat retaining and reflecting wall, with good potting mix and water retaining crystals - winter is dry. Try a white pebble mulch to keep in moisture, and reflect and absorb sunlight for most prolific growing. Spray with seaweed foliar spray once a week. The bigger the basket, the better - small baskets dry out and cool down fast.

If you want to be more adventurous, try a prostrate camelia that will sprawl nicely over the edge of a giant basket. If you choose the right variety it will be budding gloriously now and bloom all through winter for you. Obey the label, and give it the right spot.

You might even find yourself a winter-blooming prostrate banksia, to delight you and the birds. You might need to do some hunting, but they are there, like Banksia repens, with brown-gold flowers, that tolerates semi shade as well as dryness and frost, or a winter-blooming correa, or a grevillea like 'Gold Cluster' that will give you millions of spider-like yellow blooms. There is a red-flowered form too. Give your grevilleas a trim after winter blooming.

This isn't a time to stint yourself. Go wild with colour and with fragrance and the sheer exuberance of growing things. Flagrantly blooming baskets hung where they'll brighten up the world are one of the best investments for joy through winter.