Spring is the time of maximum energy and excitement in the seasonal garden. How desperate and grateful we feel for the return of fresh vigour and colour!
Do resist planting daffodils and tulips in the ground; much more versatile to plant them in containers the previous autumn.
The key to using containers to increase the versatility of your garden is to ensure good drainage - you don't want your valuable bulbs to rot in the pot! Use a bark or coir-based potting compost and plenty of vermiculite, above a couple of crocks in the base of your container and stuff the pot with bulbs, either one species or several in layers.
Tulips at the bottom, daffodils or narcissus halfway up and Scilla just covered with compost. Shallower window-boxes can display the smaller, interesting bulbs like Ipheion, Ixiolirion and Chionodoxa at a level where they can be seen best. Once your containers are in bloom, move them around or even stand them in your borders, for the effect you want. Then, when they die down, move them off to some corner of the garden and you don't need to wait for 6 weeks to get busy planting out your garden.
Bulbs that don't take up much space are: Pushkinia, Ornithogalum, Sparaxis, Anemones, Fritillaries and crocuses. Between the bulbs you do choose to plant in the ground, the evergreen plants like Nautilocalyx will provide a dark and interesting foil, together with the hellebores, purple, pink-white and green which will be flowering now. Erythroniums like a marshy corner of your garden and come in all colours.
A small garden needs to get height by using all verticals to the maximum. Early-flowering clematis, like C. Alpina, 'Frances Rivis', blue, Montana Rubra, pink, and. Armadii and Henryi, both white, or C. Macropetala, blue, give amazing volumes of colour plus greenery early in the season, while taking very little space at ground level. For stunning reds, try Parrot's bill climber or the climbing nasturtium. The marmalade bush gives a vivid orange, later in spring.
As soon as all danger of frost is past, you can start planting out perennials or annual seeds. Prune the dogwood to increase the new red growth for next winter, now you have other colour in the garden.
