Unique spring planting ideas

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Now is the time to make your garden sing with flowery, fragrant beauty. The true delight is in the details – small scenes, ornamental touches and flower-filled corners infuse your landscape with special charm.

But it’s not about spending big. Rather, be clever and creative by recycling rustic items to use as planters, or add a window box to a blank wall. When it comes to flowers, just because you didn’t plant masses of bulbs and seedlings back in autumn doesn’t mean you have to miss out on the spring bonanza.

Nurseries are filled with potted plants in perfect early bloom, so if you get in now, your instant spring garden scene will come together seamlessly.

Spring planting ideas:

• Bulbs are not fussy about where they grow, as long as they have sun and drainage, which means you can recycle all sorts of vessels as containers.

• If you love vintage gardenware, show it off. Try a trio of old watering cans placed amongst snowflakes.

• Rustic wicker baskets make seriously gorgeous displays. Just line the baskets with plastic, then sit your potted flowers within them. An explosion of tulips looks amazing – alternatively try cineraria, stock, pansies or marguerite daisies.

• Large pots needn’t feature large shrubs. Instead, use them for a massed display of low spring blooms, and create a faux mini raised flower bed in the process. And don’t be too fussy about scrubbing containers clean – mossy terracotta looks lovely with its hints of age.

• Soft blues and pinks abound at this time of year, so if they are your favourite colours, indulge! Try a pink hellebore in a terracotta pot – ‘Penny’s Pink’ or ‘Ruby Glow’ are lovely forms to look for. Or cluster some pots and plant with purple cinerarias and pansies.

• Fossick out an old bucket from a shed or salvage store and turn it into a springtime scene-stealer.

• If you’re buying potted bulbs, look for almost-ready-to-bloom plants – they’ll give you two weeks or more.

• What if you love all the colours on the potted bloomers’ table at the nursery? It’s spring – go crazy and throw the ‘colour theming’ book out the window! Group a pair of pots and try a combo of pink ranunculus, white iberis, yellow daisies and mauve nemesia (or try lobelia for your blues).

• Sometimes, dressing up the garden just requires a little rustic styling. So, instead of hiding stacks of spare terracotta pots in the garden shed, get them out and put their warm russet tones on display.