Best bulbs to plant in spring that will flower in the summer

Dalesfoot Wool Compost is bracken based, mixed with wool for water retention, plus comfrey for fertiliser and so is excellent. There’s a range for all purposes. Try the Peat Free Wool Compost for Vegetables and Salads.

Carbon Gold biochar is an organic compost with seaweed with excellent environmental credentials. The seed compost gives seedlings the best start.

Homebase does a good, peat-free all purpose compost at an affordable price tag. You can’t go wrong here.

These are extraordinarily beautiful showstoppers: reliable, fragrant and productive, and insanely expensive to buy as cut flowers. Grow your own.

Deservedly popular, very pretty pink, with a lovely scent, these will embellish your garden.

A beautiful rich deep pink-red with huge blooms.

For white, try Shirley Temple with its sweet scented ruffled white blooms.

These are among the most beautiful and productive flowers. They have terrifically long-flowering with a fabulous range of colours and shapes. They flourish in a sunny corner. But if you want to encourage bees and pollinating insects, go for the open-face sort, especially the ones designated Bishops.

This is a magnificent intense red – a wonderful, productive flower.

Price for two.

A lovely white form, flushed with pink.

Price for two.

Need I say why we should plant this fragrant, delicate flower with its graceful, bell-shaped flowers? Wonderful if you’ve got a bit of shade under a tree.

Price for eight.

These are very classy. These unique looking lilies have a sturdy vertical spike in the border, with white greenish flowers and a kind of pineapple topknot. Good in clumps.

There are so many varieties of iris, but my very favourite are the deep, rich, dark flowers that are terrifically sophisticated.

Try the Black Dragon, a gorgeous blue-black form.

Among the most fragrant flowers you can grow: enormously floriferous with a wonderful range of colours. Cheapest to grow from seed, obviously, but if you haven’t time and space, Sarah Raven offers seedlings in very good quality collections. Make sure to water them well on arrival.

The Clouds of Scent (£17.95) is available for 12 seedlings or opt for the Pea and Bean Maypole (£26.95) – an elegant and simple structure with cords suspended from a metal pole that’s good for sweet pea too.

Well, obviously, roses. And we’ve all got our favourites. But this is where I’d go for broke, with two fantastically beautiful varieties, one climbing, one shrub.

A favourite of the great gardener, Vita Sackville West, a dark red climbing rose with a rich old rose scent. It flourishes on a north-facing wall, out of strong sunshine. A bit temperamental, but a divine colour.

A very lovely shrub rose with pretty soft pink flattish flowers and a delicious scent. Healthy to boot.

These are perhaps the best border flowers of all, in a range of heights, with some of the most intense colour you’ll find. The velvety rich purples are my favourite, but I hear it for the vivid blues too. Good to underplant roses.

Yes, I’m coming to Cosmos under seeds, but do consider the Chocolate Cosmos, a lovely chocolately red with a sweet, chocolatey scent, which comes as tubers.

As far as I’m concerned, the best flower seeds are the ones you can chuck on the ground and leave to fend for themselves. There are any number of very good seed mixes you can buy which enable you to do just that, including ranges that are insect, butterfly or generally pollinator friendly. That’s the easy-peasy approach. But for single variety flowers, I’m similarly free and easy. Vegetables are another matter: here you either need to germinate at home or plant in rows and thin out. Seed tapes can space out seeds for you and you just plant a strip of paper; a very useful device.

Here are three easy flower seeds varieties, plus three good compact vegetables. Plus two seed tape options.

Cosmos are some of the easiest, most reliable cutting flowers you can grow: terrifically floriferous and easy to grow. If you can’t be bothered with the flaff of staking and supporting taller varieties, opt for more compact sizes.

Our favourites are the Cosmos Sensation Pinkie (£2.40) and Sweet Kisses (£2.40).

These aren’t often seen in cornfields now but they’re fabulous for pollinators, lovely in wildflower blue, and very pretty in mixed colour form.

Easy to grow, flourishing on disturbed soil, they’re delicate, crumple-petalled, ephemeral splashes of vivid colour. The dark peony forms are crackers.