My Spring garden is lovely but it is the nature of every gardener to see the gaps, to want more rather than less and so when I sit and enjoy the flowers, I’m also thinking about what I want to buy for next year.

Anemone blanda blue lie low at the edge of the pink rose border but there are gaps that could be filled there, and maybe a row repeated down at the front of the white rose border would be lovely too.

The crocus planted in the front lawn were mowed by the gardener by mistake so made only a late and lacklustre showing. They could be supplemented with some whites and purples now that everyone knows where to find them.

One plant we don’t need more of is muscari or fritalaria which seem to be incredibly happy

They crocus have enjoyed the gravel garden this year but could maybe be joined with some early dwarf iris, planted in nice large clumps.

Whilst I love the darker blues and purples, these are quite hard to see down the garden from the house, but very easy from the windows onto the gravel roof.

I quite enjoy the contrast but wonder how dark I could go.

I am toying with the idea of making the shady garden a spring garden, since obviously the deciduous trees at least allow some light through and the overwhelming presence of geranium is muted.

Some white narcissus pre-date me in the garden and seem shade tolerant. They’re later than the bright yellows that I’ve planted but seem tough enough to cope with my neglect.

And that’s all before we even start to think about tulips.

Working on the basis that these recur somewhat, but never perfectly, then I’ll always be looking to top up each Autumn. Some types are definitely more resilient than others, notably the bog-standard reds and parrot purples.

For underneath the hedge, I’d like to plant more species tulips though given it’s origins (sunny greek islands) it would probably do better up in the gravel.

Though maybe what I should do is move one of the thugs from the shade garden down to the lower garden and plant out under the hedge.

And despite having far too many in the main garden, I’m still considering whether or not to add some fritalaria to the muscari in gravel. If one works so well surely the other should as well?

In amongst the main rose beds, I’m generally happy with the white-pink-purple theme but this year there seems to be a lack of pink. The white tulips have started life quite yellow which is a bit disconcerting but they do seem to be settling into a brighter white.

It’s possibly all to do with the timing of the flowers. Maybe the darker Queen of the Night were just late to arrive, along with the Shirley

The front bed with it’s indestructible red tulips, has benefitted from some yellow and orange companions, but could be made even better with darker shades of red.

Maybe I could bulk out the red even further to make the clash even more obvious.

Or even a few more orange bulbs dotted towards the lawn.

Though it seems to be outside of my preferred palette of colours, if we must have those red shades, then let’s make them bold bruise shaded clashes rather than apologetic whimpers.

And since they seem to have arrived a bit later but looked beautiful, how about a few more Tulip clusiana “Peppermintstick”

Got to love bold, if you can’t pull off elegant.

One problem with lockdown is too much time which leads to too many ideas, none of which a very lazy person such as myself wants to make work especially in the garden.

The third “step” in my east-west plot is a little bit dull, comprising one bed of beautiful pink roses, a lawn with a swing seat and bordered by a yew hedge. It’s not a big space and in an ideal world, I might put in another flower bed but that takes much more effort than I’m willing to put in and more than my partner can be coerced to attempt. Digging out the bed for the second rose bed was his last ever garden project, he says. Hmm.

But we both watched a programme that suggested letting the grass grow. It sounds like the easiest, laziest of projects but I’ve a funny feeling that it might be quite a lot of hard work. The kind of hard work that takes one a look at a lawn left to seed, decided it’s an horrendous mess and then has to scythe the lot back to a height that can be mowed.

Worth a go.

But I don’t want the whole lot just randomly left to grow. I actually have some practical requirements to be met that mean a couple of grass “paths” have to be kept mown as a minimum: one through to the very back garden step in the driest shade, one to the garden swing seat which is actually the best place in the garden for a morning coffee and one infant of the roses so that I can pick the flowers through the Summer.

What’s the worst thing that can happen?

The deciding factor for whether or not the house has a good or bad day, is the weather. Thankfully there’s a lot of sunshine around in this lockdown.

And the bedding bought just before Christmas, basically violas (pansies) has survived more or less to cheer us up.

I’ve lost some to slugs, and negligence, and even more to my cats scripting where they shouldn’t. But for once the Winter baskets have come good, and I have enough pots and troughs to brighten the corners as the pear blossom dies down from the tree and the wisteria has yet to arrive

Mostly my garden is based around purple-pink-white shades.

Though to be honest , I could do with more vulgar pinks.

Down near the house where the bright red tulips just refuse to die, the house opinion is divided on the orange tulips. Maybe I should just have gone dark purple but now, inevitably, the brightest of reds and oranges are there forever.

Since the closest I can come to tasteful, is the violets everywhere in amongst the paving, I should probably just embrace vulgar and be done with it.

Though if there were to be one show-stopper at the moment, it wouldn’t be flowers or even blossom, but the foliage of the little maple tree planted far too close to the house, long before we arrived.

It may be more beautifully red in the Autumn, but the mix of red and green leaves with dappled sunshine is still beautiful.

Lockdown is a lot easier for the suburbs. People surviving lockdown with small children in cramped urban flats with no outdoor space deserve medals.

Meanwhile those of us lucky enough to have gardens have enjoyed some of the best Spring weather ever and with nothing but time to sit and enjoy the changing flowers.

From the hellebores going over, through the narcissus and crocus.

As one flower goes over, another arrives and though the garden seems to be dominated by certain showstoppers, the magnolia or the camellias

There is also pleasure in the smaller plants, the ones that find their own way into the garden, into the pavements, unplanned.

And when the first bright stars in the garden pass, the blossom of the pear tree suddenly arrives like a waterfall draping over the hedge.

As an early example of urban planning, houses here were each planted with a fruit tree alternating pear and apple along the streets.

So my pear tree is likely to be as old as the house, maybe older if planted on root stock.

Which would make this tree more than 112 years old and still so very beautiful. Not that the cats care in the sunshine.

Even the thuggish of plants, the spurge, is fizzing with lime green flowers and cheerful in the shade.

A number of late plantings from Autumn seem to have worked, from the leftover dwarf narcissus in barrels with forget-me-nots,

through to the bucket with a hole planted up with cyclamen, and the leftover narcissus

Having given up (finally) at trying to get rid of the ever repeating bright red tulips planted too quickly twenty years ago, the yellow and orange tulip companions planted in November seem to make them more comfortable, more deliberately planted.

Though like everything in my garden, it’s a basic scramble mess. I would love to be able to plant elegantly but have never been able to resist an overabundance of plants and colour.

In place of elegance and quiet contemplation, my garden is full of places to set and watch the business of bees, the mad scramble and competition as my thuggy plants fight it out of their borders.

Never mind the impending zombie apocalypse: for the first time ever, my Spring baskets have worked and are looking positively cheerful.

Thank goodness for a place to sit and a cat for company.