For most of the year Ajuga is a pleasant, quiet achiever, a very versatile low growing ground cover, with evergreen, rosette-like foliage that hugs the ground like an evergreen carpet but those weeks in spring when the blue flowers appear are simply quite magical.

Until a few years ago you would never have seen wild garlic on a menu, but these days is definitely a chefs' favourite. The whole plant is edible. The flavour is softer, more pleasant than cloves from garlic bulbs. The leaves have a vibrant colour that brings food to life.

Anthriscus sylvestris is most characteristic of hedgerows, road verges and woodland edges. Our native Cow Parsley has a sophisticated form, with delicate, open, white lacy umbels, that from mid-spring to early summer look as though they're erupting from a well shaken champagne bottle!

Anthriscus sylvestris 'Ravenswing' is the most elegant and garden-worthy form of the common cow parsley. With stunning, rich deep purple, almost black, finely cut ferny foliage the first year, it explodes the second year with delicate clusters of small white flowers held above the darkest of foliage.

Aquilegia alpina is a species-columbine that rivals the fanciest cultivars and has been grown in gardens for as long as the idea of gardening has existed. It is a clump-forming perennial with deep blue-green, downy foliage and vibrant violet blue nodding flowers in late spring and early summer.

Native to Canada and the US in all states east of the Rockies, this superb variety is quite unlike the usual Aquilegia. Growing just twelve to eighteen inches tall, with dark-green foliage and eye-catching, scarlet and lemon-yellow flowers which hang like drifts of softly illuminated lanterns.

Native to New Mexico, Aquilegia skinnerii was brought into cultivation as early as 1865 and has been since forgotten until very recently with the re-introduction of this selected new strain. An unusually attractive species, with distinctive nodding flowers that are copper-red with golden yellow centres.

Pale greenish-white, pincushion-like flowers surrounded by a ruff of greenish white bracts are produced from June to October. The delicate Astrantia alba is perfect for naturalising in areas of moist, dappled shade. It works equally well in a woodland edge or in a mixed border.

Cardamine pratensis is one of the most beautiful and one of the best loved of our wild flowers. It bears long narrow leaves and supremely elegant flowers in late spring/early summer. It flowers at the time the first cuckoo starts to call.

A popular plant for the shade garden, very easy and satisfying to grow, Dicentra eximia is a tremendous performer. Long-blooming, with nodding, heart-shaped flowers and deeply cut, fern-like foliage, planted with other shade lovers it will add charming beauty to any woodland or shade garden.