As the days begin to lengthen, the garden starts to come alive and suddenly an array of different bulbs is in flower.
This is the main reason for all the many types of dwarf daffodil, including old favorites such as February gold, whose short, sturdy stems enable them to withstand blustery spring winds.
The little anemone flowers have now opened their starry faces to greet the spring sunshine.
They are one of the most valuable plants in the garden, lasting for six weeks or more and spreading easily to create a dense carpet of color.
This is also the time for large Dutch purple, Siberian squall, glory of the snow and early single type tulips.
All of these will happily mix and match to provide endless associations with each other.
As the weeks progress, the first gorgeous blue flowers of grape hyacinth begin to emerge.
These look superb with any of the double early tulips or with ordinary bedding hyacinths.
The exotic blue of grape hyacinths is stunning with yellow tulip and with peach blossom.
Violas, pansies, primroses and polyanthus act as fine bedfellows with any of these bulbs, producing wonderful planting combinations which can be changed each year to provide different color effects.
Elsewhere corm, enjoying the damp leaf mould of late winter, will naturalize generously, creating a broad pink carpet, softened by the silver veining of the rounded leaves.
Choose a selection from the pewter group, which has plants with leaves predominantly silver grey above with a dark green margin, and from the silver group, with their predominantly grey marked leaves.
Mix them with earlier flowering corms, the leaves of which will persist through winter.