YOUR SPRING GARDEN: Top Plants for a Vibrant Spring Oasis

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Designing the Ideal Spring Garden:

Plants, Colour, and Wildlife Spring marks the start of the gardening season, and with a bit of planning, your garden can become a vibrant, buzzing oasis. The best spring gardens balance structure, colour, and wildlife-friendly planting to create a space that’s both beautiful and alive.

Top Plants for Spring:

Start with hardy annuals like cosmos, cornflowers, and calendula—these bring instant colour and are easy to grow from seed in March or April. Add spring bulbs such as tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths for early bursts of colour, especially in colder regions. For lasting structure, include perennials like lupins, aquilegia, and foxgloves, which thrive across most of the UK.

Complimenting Colours and Borders:

Use colour theory to guide your garden design. Combine contrasting hues—like purple alliums next to orange geums—to create energy. For a more calming palette, pair whites and blues with silver foliage like stachys or euphorbia. Taller plants should anchor the back of borders, while trailing plants like

alyssum or lobelia soften edges and provide cohesion.

Welcoming Insects and Wildlife:

Flowers like echinacea, lavender, and verbena bonariensis are bee magnets. Butterflies favour buddleia, scabious, and sedum. If you grow tubular flowers such as foxgloves and snapdragons, expect to see bumblebees diving deep into the blooms. Avoid double-flowered varieties, which offer little nectar. With the right mix, you’ll also attract birds, hedgehogs, and beneficial insects like ladybirds and hoverflies, which help control pests. Adding a small water feature or insect hotel boosts your garden’s biodiversity even more. A successful spring garden isn’t just about what looks good—it’s about creating a small ecosystem. With colour, structure, and nature in mind, you can make a space that thrives long after spring.

Preparing your garden for Spring:

Jobs to do this weekend to get your garden ready for spring. With plenty of sun forecast across

the United Kingdom this weekend, it’s the perfect time to get down in the dirt and prepare for spring. From planting bulbs for an instant pop of colour to banishing weeds so your seeds have room to bloom, these are the best jobs to get busy with until springtime is well and truly here.

Clean your greenhouse:

Light is a precious commodity during the winter, and a layer of dust and grime that can build up on the outside of a greenhouse can inhibit the transmission of light to your plants and seedlings. Warm soapy water and a soft brush will remove that layer of grime, allowing as much light into your greenhouse for your plants as possible. When cleaning your greenhouse, also consider the insides, making sure you get into all those nooks and crannies to also remove any overwintering pests. It may seem excessive, but the more light that is let into the greenhouse, the more efficiently your plants will grow. Take this opportunity to clean any seed trays with warm soapy water to reduce the risk of disease affecting young, vulnerable seedlings. Dry any trays thoroughly before you store them.

Clear weeds from beds, feed and mulch:

Weeds are incredibly successful plants and have adapted to produce many generations of seedlings over a short period of time, so it’s important that we keep on top of them from the start of the year. Bear in mind that many weeds have beneficial attributes in terms of providing shelter and pollination opportunities for insects, and if you have a wilder part of your garden, do leave it alone to provide as much diversity as possible. When it comes to my beds and borders, I would much rather chase those weeds out and maintain an element of control. To put yourself on the front foot, remove any weeds with a fork and put them onto your compost heap. Avoid composting bindweed, ground elder or docks, as they will persist and come back if your heap isn’t hot enough, unless you have a specific bin for perennial weeds. For most of us, pop those perennial weeds into your bin or incinerate them. Once you’ve got clear ground between your plants, add a 5-10cm layer of mulch in the form of garden compost or well-rotted manure to retain moisture and improve your soil’s fertility. Spent mushroom compost and straw-based mulches are lightweight and easy to move around (though expensive), but I find they have little nutritional merit. Green waste compost from a local vendor will not only suppress weeds but also boost soil biology and your plants.

Tie in climbers:

Never turn your back on a clematis or any other climber at this time of year, because they seem to grow at an incredible rate and become unruly quickly. As the new growth emerges, tie in those new shoots into a desired position that will serve you well into the summer. Young shoots can be brittle, so tying them in regularly is a much better system; if you try to wrestle them into submission later, you will often lose the fight and then sacrifice precious flowering stems. Jute string is perfect for most climbers, and I tie the string to the support and then loosely tie it around the stem, creating a figure of eight with the centre of the eight between the stem and the support, which acts as a cushion. Check any old ties and replace them if they’re weather-beaten, as once growth starts and they break, it’s difficult to regain that control without damaging the plant. The ties need to be tight enough to hold the stem in position but loose enough to allow the stem to grow and thicken. During the summer, keep checking your ties and loosen as needed, as this will instantly transform the appearance of a once tangled mess.

Start growing a few dahlias:

Dahlias are wonderful flowers to have in the garden and can be grown in a variety of ways and started off at this time of year. Seed-raised dahlias produce a range of colours in a single seed packet (I’d recommend ‘Bishop’s children’, particularly if you like to grow your own cut flowers). Dried tubers, in packets of a single type, which are available at most garden centres and nurseries, will give you uniformity and specific characteristics. Whether you choose to grow your dahlias from seed or by tubers, they’ll give you a riot of colour all summer long. How to grow dahlias from seed: Fill a small pot of peat-free compost to the top and level off Lightly compact the surface of the compost with the base of another pot or with a tamper Water the compost well to saturate it and form a level, moist surface Sow your dahlia seed thinly and then cover with vermiculite. Place in a heated propagator or on a sunny windowsill to encourage germination When the seedlings are large enough to handle, prick them out into individual modules of peat- free compost. Water well and then pots on into 9cm pots when roots appear through the drainage holes of the module. A well-rooted 9cm dahlia will be a good size to plant out into the garden or in containers.

How to start a dahlia off from a tuber:

Dahlia tubers are widely available and aren’t expensive. Dwarf forms are great for pots, and when it comes to the taller varieties, there are myriad flower types out there for every taste. Once you’ve got your dahlia tuber home, unwrap it from the packaging and get hold of a two-litre plastic pot.

Pop a handful of peat-free compost in the base of the pot and then sit your dahlia tuber on the top. Backfill all around the tuber with more compost to the top of the pot so that the tip of the shoot is just poking above the soil level. Water it well and keep the compost moist. Position your dahlia in a frost-free, well-lit spot such as a sunny windowsill until the end of May, when your dahlia can be planted

into your summer containers or borders for lots of colour. Buy some bulbs in growth for some instant

colour

Gardens can be sombre places in early March, with the dominant colours being brown and grey. Garden centres have wised up and realised that many of us wish that we’d remembered to plant a few more bulbs for much-needed colour, and they are now stocking lots of potted bulbs that are ready to be planted in borders and pots. Any container is suitable if there are a few drainage holes in the base to allow water to escape and prevent the bulbs becoming too wet and waterlogged. Use a multipurpose, peat-free compost and keep your bulbs moist but not too wet. Try a few thymes, ivies or heucheras as a little extra interest. Miniature daffodils such as ‘Tete a Tete’ and ‘Jetfire’ are incredibly reliable for some much-needed sunshine; you’ll be surprised how much pleasure you’ll get from planting up a spring container this weekend, with splashes of colour to lift your spirits.

Lay off the lawn and focus on the patio:

In most cases, it’s too early to start mowing your lawns. The sodden ground and lack of growth make it easy to damage the lawn and leave scars from mower wheels or rollers. When the ground is drier, a high cut will start the process of tidying up but keep the mower in the shed for a few more weeks. For now, rake off any leaves and debris, and focus on cleaning your patio instead.

Planting Calendar:

March

Sow Indoors / Under Cover:

Cosmos

Calendula

Sweet Peas

Tomatoes (if you have a greenhouse)

Sunflowers (late March)

Plant Out (if ground is workable):

Daffodil and Tulip bulbs (if not planted in

autumn)

Bare root perennials like lavender or roses

Pot-grown herbs: thyme, chives, mint

April

Sow Outdoors:

Cornflowers

Nigella

Alyssum

Nasturtiums

Wildflower seed mixes for

pollinators

Plant Out:

Hardy annuals like calendula and

sweet peas

Plug plants of salvias, delphinium,

and aquilegia

May

Sow Outdoors:

Sunflowers

Zinnias

Rudbeckia

Marigolds

Beetroot, lettuce, carrots (for

edible gardens)

Plant Out (after last frost):

Cosmos, verbena bonariensis,

echinacea

Tender plants like dahlias, petunias, geraniums

Herbs: basil, parsley, coriander

Wildlife Tips by Month:

March: Install bird feeders, clean water dishes

April: Set up insect hotels and bee bricks

May: Leave small wild corners—great for hedgehogs and ladybirds