Why early spring flowers should be on every gardener’s wish list

Jolts of clashing colour are engulfing gardens. Acid-green euphorbias are mixing with purple echiums, blue borage and orange geums. There are pink poppies, apricot calendulas, yellow paper daisies, golden daffodils and magenta honesty. Abundant and alluring, more is more for early spring flowers.

Prettier than paving, more ecological than lawn and livelier than woodchip mulch, squeezing in more September blooms should be on every gardener’s to-do list.

While there’s a lot to be said for foliage that can be enjoyed four seasons of the year, the flamboyance of flowers brings a new dimension – they are the icing on the gardening cake.

Their beauty lifts our mood, their smell lowers stress levels and their transience marks the passing of the seasons. Flowers in all their blowsy, willowy, evocative glory change the atmosphere.

More is more when it comes to spring flowers, like pink poppies.Credit: Getty Images

They are also magnets for wildlife. No need for elaborate feeders when birds can dine on nectar, snack on pollen and – later in the season, once the flower has died and dried – enjoy seeds straight from your mixed beds. Bees and other beneficial insects also turn to flowers for the sustenance that drives their work as pollinators, pest controllers and biodiversity enhancers.

More flowers mean more life and, even in a small garden, you can host a diverse floral crowd. Heady combinations of blooms will happily weave around one another at a multitude of heights, exuding various patterns, forms and textures. As well as being a visual highlight they are a useful ground cover. Why use woodchips, if flowers could protect your soil just as well?

Rich flower-filled landscapes don’t necessarily even take a lot of work. Some of these blooms will erupt spring after spring with little help from the gardener, their spontaneous spread lending a lavish wildness.

Now is the time to introduce them to your patch, by sowing seeds (you can still have flowers in a couple of months) or planting seedlings. Once they are established you can largely leave them alone.

But it is possible to have too much of a good thing and, at some point, most of us will feel the need to rein in some of the bounty. Forward planners can remove the flowers of plants that get overly prolific (common early spring offenders are euphorbias, echiums and borage) before they set seed and thereby stop them entirely charting their own course. Otherwise, you can swoop in later and remove unwanted plants that have already appeared.

Catch these seedlings young enough, and you can transplant them into more suitable spots about the garden, tucking them into bare patches – and there are always bare patches. The resulting repetition will only enhance your garden’s sense of unity.

But beware of the spring peak. It’s worth anticipating how things will look once the current round of blooms fades away. For a garden to hum with life, it needs a succession of flowers: alliums and achilleas, from late spring, cosmos and rudbeckia in summer, agastache and dahlias from summer into autumn.

At this time of year, it’s also worth casting your eyes around for other plants that might be spread about, to close gaps in the garden and provide extra interest in coming months. Sedums, salvias, geraniums, verbenas and other herbaceous perennials with new growth can be dug up, divided and moved while they still have time to put down new roots before the dry heat of the warmest months kicks in. Regularly water them, especially if there is little rain.

While you are planting, spread compost about, too. Flowers are born from the soil and the more you care for your soil the better your flowers will do. This is the moment to empty your compost and apply all the well-rotted bits. Use it as mulch around existing plants or work it down into areas you are currently planting to improve fertility and structure.

Return to your compost bin or bay any bits that have not yet decomposed then start adding new materials: the fallen leaves and plant debris that has been gathering over beds for months; the trimmings of plants you are currently cutting back to keep everything bushy, dense and in scale. Add lawn clippings, food scraps and torn-up paper.

Every bit will – in time – help keep your garden in lively, luminous flowers.

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