March

Known for its graceful umbels, Bupleurum 'Bronze Beauty' produces small ochre flowers, each surrounded by showy, petal-like bracts. As the season progresses, the bracts mature into warm, cinnamon-bronze tones that are particularly valued in naturalistic planting schemes.

Ornamental Grass Briza maxima has blue green leaves and flower heads that hang like scaly little heart shaped lockets that are tinged with pink from late spring to mid summer. They make a wonderful cut flower and flowering in 10 to 12 weeks from spring sowing, they are very easy to grow to perfection.

The herb borage is a well known annual with beautiful blue flowers. Not so well known and not often written about is the equally beautiful form 'alba' which boast pure white, perfectly star-shaped flowers. This mixed pack of seeds gives both blue and white forms.

The herb borage is a well known annual. Not so well known is the equally beautiful form 'alba' which boast pure white, perfectly star-shaped flowers. Each flower is centred by five black stamens which heighten the drama. The flowers are edible, garden visitors can be converted to herbal advocates simply by offering a taste of its white flower.

Be prepared to get your funk on. The Funky Begonia has entered the dance floor, and she's ready to boogie all summer long. Huge, voluptuous flowers with superior heat tolerance and semi-trailing yet dense, sturdy growth habit, in six fantastic colours – Light Pink, Bright Pink, Orange, Red, Scarlet and White.

Elegant cascades of vivid, elongated flowers with large, arrow-shaped, neatly serrated, green leaves. Begonia boliviensis ‘F1 Sun Cities Mixed’ feature the three ‘Sun Cities’ of the USA: ‘San Francisco’ has slmon-pink blooms, ‘Santa Barbara’ features white blooms and ‘Santa Cruz’, fiery red blooms

Aubrieta has long been treasured for its delightful spring show of brightly coloured flowers. ‘Whitewell Gem’ is smothered by large, intense reddish-purple flowers for several months. Lovely spilling out of crevices or over rock walls, the plants can also be used in paving with other ground hugging plants.

Commonly called ‘Rock Cress’, Aubrieta is a traditional rock garden plant that is lovely spilling out of crevices, growing over rock walls or placed in stonewalls. 'Leichtlinii' forms a low cushion of leaves that is, throughout the summer months, smothered by wonderful deep-carmine flowers.

Aubrieta 'Hendersonii' is a vigorous variety that is smothered by rich lilac-purple flowers for several months in spring. It grows to only 10 to 15cm tall at maturity, but with a spread of around 45cm it makes a lively edging to a sunny border, growing over rock walls or placed in stonewalls.

Asphodeline lutea is an easy to grow perennial that has great architectural form. The overall impression is distinctly upright, so it is good for adding vertical interest to the garden. In early summer leafy stems arise that bear dense, unbranched cylindrical spikes of gorgeous yellow, star-shaped flowers.

Artemisia stelleriana 'Mori's Strain' is a superior, dense, mat-forming selection. Uniquely shaped silver-white felted leaves with deeply divided, rounded lobes, it forms very attractive low mounds, giving an attractive ground-hugging carpet. Its foliage makes a wonderful foil for more colourful flowering plants.

Prized for its beautiful silvery foliage, the fine grey-white stems of Artemisia ludoviciana bear silvery-white leaves that are fragrant, fuzzy and soft. This finely textured plant adds a different element to the garden, the texture and leaf form setting them apart from those other garden plants with rather less refined foliage.

Aquilegia var. stellata 'Barlow Mix' is one of the really exceptional doubles forms of Aquilegia. It is the first Aquilegia series with fully double, spurless flowers. Stylish and elegant, with a graceful upright habit they grow to around 80cm tall. It produces many stems and makes an ideal cut flower.

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.

Aquilegia atrata is a beautiful free flowering species that is native to the alpine meadows and forest clearings of Switzerland and Northern Europe. With many branching stems of deepest coloured, almost black flowers. This is an outstanding, highly sought species that would be a showstopper in any garden.

Antirrhinum majus 'Lucky Lips' has been awarded the Fleuroselect Award. The judges were impressed by its height and compact plant habit. Blooming with distinctive contrasting bicolour purple-red and white flowers, a colour way that is often referred to as a 'silver bi-colour', it is ideal for adding height to borders or for cutting.

Antirrhinum 'Yellow Shades' feature delicate primrose-yellow, frilled blooms on compact plants. Double snapdragon blooms are often referred to as 'butterfly' or 'Azalea' type blooms. Given sunshine and well-drained soil, they grow vigorously and flower freely.

'Twinny White' snapdragons produce large 'butterfly' or 'azalea' flowered blooms that jostle one another for space on compact plants. Given sunshine and well-drained soil, they grow vigorously and flower freely. The plants are exceptionally weather tolerant, and are excellent performers in both heat and rain.