For muted colour at this time of year there are several other reliable houseplants. For example, I also tend to buy the odd heather. I like the antique, washed-out magenta form, more than the pale pink or white, but they all look good arranged in a line, like the echeverias, down the middle of a table, or as a single plant on a desk. I’d always hated heathers, thinking them rather desiccated and dreary, but I changed my mind after seeing them in Paris last winter in lots of steamy cafés.

There they were, sitting in nice old terracotta pots, in situations few other plants would put up with, giving a bit of quiet winter colour on almost no TLC. The great thing about heathers is that their flowers dry on the stem without browning for months, so you can neglect to water a plant without any obvious effect. Don’t move them around too much, as they will drop their flowers and leaves if totally dried out, but left alone, they’ll look fine until spring.

I also have one large, three or four year-old plant of the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, which I bring in to the house. This is happy in quite a dark corner, and if kept moist, it should produce a whole new generation of leaves in the next few weeks. These will be followed by clear, white saucer flowers, held upright on the stem. I find each of these lasts more than a month indoors. The flowers gradually turn into seed pods, but continue to look good until at least Easter. As well as finding these in florists, you’ll often see them on garden centre shelves in the build-up to Christmas, sold specifically as houseplants.

Scented-leaved pelargoniums — such as ‘Lady Plymouth’ and P. tomentosum — will continue to go strong for several more weeks if brought inside now, and these are lovely to have on a kitchen windowsill. They won’t flower much, if at all, in our cooler climate, but their leaves still make an invaluable addition to blackberry and apple pie, jam or crumble. Harvest one or two leaves and add them to the fruit as you cook it for a delicious extra tang.

There’s one pelargonium which always flowers right up until Christmas in a sunny place and that’s the beautiful, deep velvet crimson, ‘April Hamilton’.

You can move this into pride of place whenever you want a party in the next few months, surrounding it with shiny Christmas baubles or silver-sprayed alliums in the build-up to Christmas. In some years, I’ve had this looking good in flower until March.

It then tends to get too leggy and stop flowering, so at this point I just cut it back and wait for it to perform again the following year.

With all of these plants in your house, this winter is going to be a cheerful season inside, whatever the weather outside.