Even a plant as common and easy-to-grow as lamb's ears (Stachys byzantina) is a sensory delight, with soft, woolly leaves and a silvery sheen to its felted foliage.

NOW, WHEN the garden is quietest, is the best time to appreciate its sensual qualities. In part this is because dreary winter makes us eager for color and fragrance, but also, if you're tuned in to all a garden offers, stepping outside on a summer afternoon can be dizzying. Bees buzz and dragonflies hover, lilies and roses waft their strong perfume through the air, and if that isn't enough, the silky perfection of petals compels you to touch and pick. Vibrations from chomping, growing, fluttering, bursting, ripening and blooming burst from every square inch of soil. It can be overwhelming, and individual charms are lost in the tumult.

Although a bit muted, the winter garden has its own libido, its own palpable charms. Perhaps what is most endearing about the garden now is the surety of renewal to come. The branches may be bare, the flowers gone, but the regenerative force is just biding its time. If the plump points of bulbs haven't yet pushed their way out of the soil, they soon will. Hellebores bloom, witch hazels uncurl their spicily-scented, spidery flowers, sarcococca blossoms scent the chilly air with the aroma of vanilla. And the whole majestic tapestry of stems, leaves, blossom and fruit will again unfold in the enduring embrace of the season. We love our gardens for the beating of this eternal pulse.

I believe the pure sensuality of leaf and flower, color, scent and soil calls us at a level far deeper than reason. (Speaking of reason, is your nursery catalog order in any way justifiable? Putting mine together may get me through the winter, but its length appears entirely indefensible.)

Despite all the hard work, money and time spent on the garden, its real attraction is play, which is always a revel in the sensory. Remember how silly putty stretched, the fun of snapping Legos together, or the fierce joy of claiming your favorite color of crayon out of a new jumbo-size box? The absorbing pleasures of manipulating, selecting, creating and transforming are what make gardening so satisfying. As we search for a new color of dahlia, dig in the dirt, move plants about, or detail a new arbor, all we've really done is move from the playroom or sandbox out into the garden.
 

Now In Bloom The little rose-pink, swept-back petals of Cyclamen coum look far too delicate to be blooming in January. A flock of flowers hovers above the handsome, heart-shaped leaves, which are decoratively marbled in varying patterns of green and pewter. The foliage emerges in autumn, spreading to cover the ground before the flowers appear in the first weeks of winter. Cyclamen should be planted in well-draining soil; they spread and bloom in either sun or light shade.

It was a simple silvery lamb's ear (Stachys byzantina) the most common of plants, that changed me from someone who enjoyed gardening into one obsessed by plants. I was at a conference, touring yet another impressive landscape, when I veered off from the group into a little herb garden. There a raised bed was filled with soft, wooly leaves glossed with a moonlight sheen. It was impossible not to stroke them, turn them over, and when I heard they were called lamb's ears, I was hooked. Now I can't walk through a garden without rubbing tree bark, smelling leaves and flowers, gathering petals, listening to the crunch of leaves underfoot, paying attention to sun, shadow and the flit of birds.

Once you start noticing a plant's tactile qualities, you're lost in a world of sensory wonders. Here are a few more plants likely to lift your spirits during the short, cold days of mid-winter:

Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) are one of the earliest bulbs to bloom, with a sweet scent and pure white, nodding flowers. Winter iris (I. unguicularis) have spiky foliage and fragrant, violet-blue flowers. Paperbark maple (Acer griseum) is most spectacular after its leaves drop, when its bark is appealingly shaggy and cinnamon-colored. White birch (Betula albosinensis) have trunks so pale they seem to reflect the light. Wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox) is a lanky shrub with the sweetest of scents emanating from insignificant, pale-yellow flowers. Viburnum bodnantense is a tall, stiff shrub covered with bright-pink, perfumed flowers.