Tulips and other spring flowers - jewels of the garden

 It's a visual feast in the garden at the moment: spring flowers dancing in the breeze and adding delicate pastel shades to borders, verges and containers.

Crocuses in a makeshift container.

Left: Prunus Kojo-no-Mai brightens up the patio with early spring blossom; Right: Leucojum aestivum, the summer snowflake, arches gracefully over the border.

Ipheion uniflorum.

Fritillaria meleagris 'Alba', the white-flowered version of the snakeshead fritillary - the checkerboard pattern appears as though embossed on the petals.

Tulips are the jewels of the spring garden. Available in so many colours from pure white to deepest midnight purple, with reds, yellows and pinks in-betweem. Tall stems can lift the flowers up to a metre high, while dwarf varieties will sit snugly in a pot.

Vase-shaped, frilled, open or closed, tulip blooms have been cultivated into different shapes since the 17th century when they became wildly fashionable with bulbs commending ridiculously high prices (The resulting tulip market crash in 1637 wiped out fortunes overnight).

These days, they make a colourful, low-maintenance addition to the garden. Plant bulbs in the open ground, or in pots, in the autumn, keep the squirrels off them (I use netting, or upturned hanging basket holders), and you will be rewarded in April with a colourful display -

Ideas for planting containers

Your outdoor space, whether it's a balcony, courtyard, or garden, is precious. It could become a lifeline and a haven in the next few weeks and months for anyone who is self-isolating, whether as a precaution or in quarantine.

Simply brightening up your space with a plant in a pot, or growing some herbs, or combining a few different plants in a container or border, will give you pleasure and something to nurture.

Plants in containers can be a mix of foliage and blooms, or a pot filled with one glorious blossoming plant.

Grow herbs, such as this mix of basils, indoors on a sunny windowsill.

Left: Tillandsia, or airplants, survive without soil and just the occasional mist of water. Right: a simple arrangemnt of plant pockets on a wall can house a mini-herb garden.

Various succulents can live happily in a shallow bowl.

Try repurposing mugs, cups, bowls or tins as miniature plant pots - just remember to drill a hole in the bottom for drainage.

Breathing fresh air, hearing birdsong, seeing spring flowers in bloom and new leaves unfurl, is life-affirming and raises the spirits.

Topiary at Felley Priory

An early spring visit to the walled garden at Felley Priory, Nottinghamshire today. Parts of the priory date back to 1156, and today, the garden is justly renowned for its incredible topiary, the snowdrops (now just going over) and the summer herbaceous borders.

I was particularly struck by how beautifully tended and cared-for the plants were overall, from the carpet of hellebores to the magnificent wall-trained Magnolia grandifloras. Well-stocked nursery, too -

January containers - brighten up the garden in the depths of winter

Many garden do not look their best in winter. Bare branches, or perennials which die down completely in the dormant season, can leave you with some rather grey and flat spaces. There are however, plenty of plants which look their best in winter and while you may not have the space or the inclination to create a dedicated winter garden such as those at Anglesey Abbey, you can certainly brighten up a shady corner or a dark chilly patio with some large containers full of winter colour. 

The bare red stems of Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire', above, provide a vibrant framework for this container which is full of warm colours. The amber-bronze winter foliage of Euonymus fortunei 'Emerald and Gold' complements the fiery stems and the soft yellows of Primula vulgaris add a cooler tone. The fern, Blechnum spicant, adds contrasting texture to the display and the snowdrops - Galanthus nivalis - complete the woodland vibe. There are also bright yellow aconites in here which will be pushing upwards and flowering within the month. 

These plants are all happy in shade and so this is a display which would be happy in a dark corner of the garden. Once the season is over, you can plant them out in the garden: the snowdrops and primroses will spread over time to give you bright ground cover at a time when the ground can be a  bit bare.

Other possibilities for this container, following the colour and texture themes, could be a Mahonia eurybracteata 'Soft Caress' with its fine foliage and yellow candle-like flowers, or a small flowering Hamamelis (witch hazel).

The silvery notes in the container above combine the dwarf Pinus mugo with Helleborus niger with its pure white flowers, lavender and Hedera helix 'Glacier', a variegated trailing ivy. This can bring light and texture to patio space and will be happiest out in the open. You could also add some white cyclamen to the planter, which also has Fritillaria meleagris in both its distinctive snakeskin purple and white flowered forms just pushing through the soil surface now to flower in early spring.

Other variations on this theme add white-flowered Hebe or Festuca glauca to accentuate the blue-grey notes of the lavender and ivy. Given a large enough containers,these plants could be grown all the year round in the pot, or replanted in the garden once the flowering season is finished.

Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire', as in the container at the top of this post, is used extensively in winter gardens such as those at Anglesey Abbey, above, the avenues of flamecoloured stems creating a dramatic display. Anglesey Abbey also has impressive stands of bright white birch trees and at this time of year, the ground is carpeted with snowdrops.  Red- and purple-stemmed Cornus will also give the same effect - see the winter garden at the Cambridge Botanical Gardens, below.

The year in the gardens

Top to bottom, left to right: Hellebores; Allium 'Purple Sensation'; Paeonies; Heuchera 'Palace Purple' with Erigeron karvinskianus; Acer palmatum 'Sango-Kaku' with Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Golf Ball'; Achillea millefolium 'Cloth of Gold' with penstemons and clematis; Rosa 'Rhapsody in Blue'; Dicksonia antarctica; Salvia 'Amistad'.

It's been an unsettled year for gardening in London, with frequent unseasonal changes in the weather, although nothing like the challenge of last year's three month drought. An icy January gave way to a very muddy February, neither conditions ideal for getting early planting underway. Then came a long dry spring characterised by continued cold nights which inhibited growth in new plants.

Some plants thrived in the conditions: tulips came late, but very strongly once they were in flower; hellebores loved the long start to the year and paeonies were the best they've been for many years across several gardens. Acers suffered in the cold winds (and probably some waterlogging in some specimens) - I was called out to inspect and assess several Acers with withered branches - in some cases affecting as much as half an established plant. Those in sheltered sites in dappled shade seemed to fare the best.

Roses also had a good year, especially climbers heavy with blooms from June onwards. Other summer reliables such as Agapanthus and Hemerocallis had a steady, if not showstopping, year.

As summer gave way to a wet and sometimes windy autumn, leafy ferns came into their own in the damp conditions and trees showed their autumn colours early. Hylotelephiums (formerly sedums), dahlias and the tall Salvias such as 'Amistad' and 'Black and Blue' brought dramatic late colour to many gardens.

As I write this, the Nerines are just coming out, and we have the delicate blooms and sweet vanilla scents of Hamamelis, Sarcococca and Daphne odora to look forward to over winter, along with bright berries and the glossy green leaves of many evergreens.

The good, the bad and the puzzling - the year at the allotment

It's been a mixed year in the kitchen garden, with unpredictable successes and failures. Last year, it was easy to see that the long heatwave at the beginning of summer would be good for tomatoes, chillies and sweet peppers; this year has been much more unsettled.

There has still been plenty to celebrate. About six weeks ago, the bare earth container which holds the saffron crocus bulbs, started sending up little shoots, and for the last month I've been carefully tweazing out bright red stigmas to store as my first proper saffron crop.

Also coming good for the very first time is the fennel, a crop that has tended to bolt in previous years. I think the consistently wet autumn helped deliver steady moisture to the developing plants and produce some lovely crisp swollen stems.

Stalwarts that didn't disappoint included the globe artichokes: the plants, once established, produce multiple buds between May and July, then, after a rest in high summer, start sending up new buds again in September. We are just finishing them now.

Potatoes were terrific again this year: beautiful Lady Christls like unblemished hens' eggs in June, followed by delicious pink-skinned Rosevals and a long season for the maincrop Pink Fir Apples.

The weather was very slow to warm up in spring, which meant that chillies, peppers, tomatoes and aubergines couldn't go outside until much later than usual, and the seedlings stayed tiny until June/July. The sweet peppers, tomatoes and aubergines caught up quite quickly once they were finally planted out in the polytunnel and greenhouse (and the sweet peppers happily went outside); the chillies on the other hand, are still mostly green and I'm not sure the Carolina Reapers will ever fully develop.

The outdoor tomatoes fruited late but then they all fruited at once. We had about a month until the blight arrived at the start of October and then of course the plants were all gone over in the space of a few days. The greenhouse plants normally keep going until December, given mild enough weather outside, but having picked a load of little Black Cherries and the last few San Marzanos last week, I doubt we will get any more now.

Tree and soft fruit yields were similarly mixed. The red, pink and blackcurrants all fruited reliably but the whitecurrant bushes produced significantly fewer berries. I managed to net the cherry trees in good time (for once) and enjoyed a good cherry harvest. One day it would be nice to save some to make jam, or liqueur, but they are a bit too delicious to resist eating straightaway.

The quince tree, normally so prolific, only set four fruit this year. I think this may well be because we gave it its first proper pruning last winter. There was certainly plenty of blossom in late spring. And the pear trees nearby were so laden with fruit that I was giving away carrier bags full of fruit for a couple of  months in late summer. The perpetual spinach all bolted and I heard similar tales from other allotmenteers. The winter radishes, so plentiful in 2018, are this year still tiny and showing no signs of plumping up so far. We will just have to hunker down with the parsnips, beetroot, oca and yacon over the winter.

Grow your own - saffron

They say that saffron is the most expensive spice in the world, gram for gram.  Historically and indeed in the present day, it is much-prized for the golden yellow colour it adds to food or cloth, and for its warm sunshiney aroma.

Its high price by weight is partly because the saffron threads barely weigh anything: you need around 450 filaments to yield a single gram. It's also labour-intensive to harvest: the three long red stigma (below) are the parts of the flower that are picked and all saffron is gathered by hand.

Saffron originated in the Eastern Mediterranean, probably in Iran, which remains the largest producer of the spice in the world today. While it likes the bright Mediterranean sunshine, saffron grows perfectly well outside in the UK given a sunny position. It's also an attractive, with pretty striped mauve flowers, golden yellow anthers and the distinctive red stigmas.

You cannot just harvest any old crocus, however: not all crocus stigma are edible and some are poisonous. You need the long red filaments from Crocus sativus, or saffron crocus. It's an autumn-flowering variety which lies dormant for much of the rest of the year.

For that reason I grow mine in a large container, an old discarded water tank. If I had them in the open ground it would be all too easy to let the area become overgrown with weeds, or, worse, to forget about the crocus and start trying to grow something else in the space. 

Growing in a container also means you can ensure it's the in right place, which in this case, means the sunniest spot on the allotment but also one that is fairly sheltered. The saffron crocus bulbs like to bake all summer long before throwing up leaves and flower buds in September/October. They also like well-drained soil: easier to control in the container which has gravel lining the bottom, then layers of multi-purpose compost before a surface layer of topsoil.

Each bulb, or more accurately, each corm, will throw up one flower in a season, so you need plenty of plants to start off with. The corms will, however, divide in following years, so your stock should increase so long as the plants survive. 

The bare corms are generally available in mid to late summer. Plant each one about 10cm deep, pointy end facing upwards, and leave 15cm or so between them. You may well have to protect the bed from birds and squirrels who like to dig the corms up. I initially thought this would only be an issue while the bulbs were establishing but it turns out that they will happily dig for crocus corms at any time. So my plants grow through black narrow mesh netting stretched across the top of the old water tank and stapled into place. 

Once planted out and protected from foragers, you can pretty well leave them alone. They're perfectly hardy in a UK winter. I got a few flowers to harvest in my first year, but in year two they started producing much more prolifically. The leaves die down completely over winter so your saffron bed will be bare throughout the summer until the shoots start poking through the soil surface again in August/September.

Once the flowers start to come, you should harvest while the red stigmas are just showing, and on a dry morning: in the wet all that lovely golden pigment starts leaching out. Carefully pull them away at the base - this, finally, is where I have found a use for the teeny-tiny tweezers in my Swiss Army knife.

The threads need to dry out before being stored for culinary use. Optimally, this should be done in a warm place, even over gentle heat - Aga owners have an ideal saffron dryer. The rest of us can use the airing cupboard. Once dried, the saffron can be stored in an airtight container such as a small jar, in the a dark cool cupboard, and a pinch used for flavouring paellas, sauce, rice and so on as needed.

Saffron crocus corms available from Farmer Gracy, Suttons and J Parkers, among others.