10 Stunning Spring Flowering Plants That Thrive in Awkward Spaces

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]This video is all about my best spring flowers. Now, they're not difficult spring flowers. They're not particularly common. Um, but I they're plants that you can grow that I think are really really easy in the garden and really bring me joy at this time of year. Now, apologies for the interruption today, but as you can see, we've just got our piglets for the year. Hello, darling.

[00:00:27]Hello, darling. And I always think they came the day before yesterday and you had to catch them with a net and um they were really really scared and you can see how quickly they become really tame and I always like our livestock. It has to be quite spar sparsely populated. So they will go out into the wood in a couple of days. I think at the moment if they went out there they'd get agriobia because it's massive. Um, but you can see in a couple of days they become very familiar with me and I just find it really easy when you've got animals that that trust you and respect you. Um, it that's much easier for both parties. So, I think they're lovely. But anyway, the first of these plants is lunar shedlow.

[00:01:12]Okay. Okay. Um, they love behind their ears being scratched. They love their tummies being scratched. You see it goes right down as soon as you stretch its tummy and they are so soft and they are so beautiful and they're um Oxford Sandy and Black in case you haven't seen this breed before. Okay. And if you speak to them, they get really excited.

[00:01:40]It's all about communication with animals, isn't it? Anyway, let's talk about the honesty. You might know this honesty. Lunaria um annual Chedglow and Chedglow is um the name given to it by a guy called Martin Barber. Now Martin Barber noticed this. I don't know where he saw it. And he is a guy who actually hunts down and keeps his eyes open. He's got very sharp eyes for unusual plants, plants that just suddenly develop. And he I wouldn't eat this, darling. and he found this plant and he named it um Chedgrow. And a lot of the plants that he finds and introduces are given that name. You're just so excited. Please calm down. Now, it it's an annual plant or banual. Um and it seeds profusely, but it's quite easy to control. It doesn't take over areas because you can easily just pull them out. Um and it does come with variation in the color.

[00:02:40]Sometimes you have a greener leaf, sometimes you have a a more purple leaf.

[00:02:45]Martin says you should rogue out the ones that don't have a very purple leaf.

[00:02:49]And I like the paler underside. Um, and I introduce this all around my garden because although I tend to like to have certain plants in certain areas, um, I think that is a plant I love ever and it flowers for quite a long time. So get some seeds if you can or get a friend to give you a few. I've given so many away.

[00:03:08]I gave some to High Grove and other gardens and it's so easy. And I did notice one time a sport came up. So I had a completely different seedling and I and here's the photograph of it with this pink and white mottle flowers which I then sent to Martin and he said he had seen a variant like that before and he told me um to propagate it but I failed sadly. They don't always remain stable.

[00:03:35]But the other honesty I like is the perennial honesty. Um, which is Lunaria Red. I don't eat that. I didn't put my best clothes on, but I didn't give you those. They have been fed. You might think they're starving, but they just they're piggies. When you give them a bit of chocolate, they get very excited.

[00:03:53]Um, there you are, my darling. There you are. Right. Let's go and show them the perennial honesty. But if you don't mind, I think we'll leave you two here.

[00:04:00]Would you mind? So, I think you can see see in a day and a half. They are very familiar and not at all scared and will be quite easy to handle from now on. Not that we handle them much, but with any livestock, you're meant to check them twice a day. But obviously, because they're in the orchard, we will see them 100 times a day. Don't eat my fine boots, please. My No, I like my boots. I like my boots. Luckily, their teeth aren't very well developed at the moment. But anyway, piglets, I'll leave you to it. We'll go and look at the perennial honesty, and I'll chuck you with some broccoli or something in a minute. They love green. Anyway, bye-bye. Let's go on to that. This is the perennial, honestly. And this patch must have been here for I don't know, maybe 10 years. It's luna red divor. And it's spread all the way along. So, it seeds. It it it spreads outwards and it selfseeds, I think. And you can see it's got these sort of quite heartshaped serrated leaves, a bit like the annual one. And I love it because I just plant it and then you do nothing more. And it comes out early in spring. We are now sort of midappril, mid towards the end.

[00:05:07]And it's must have been flowering for 3 weeks, four weeks, something like that. And it will go on a bit longer.

[00:05:14]Um, and it's just a very comforting sort of naturalistic country garden type flower that behaves itself beautifully, spreads nicely, gently, and you just love it. And with it, I think it does look quite nice to have the red and white. I mean, this isn't one of my top easy ones, although it's a very favorite rose of mine, which is um Bengal tiger.

[00:05:35]It's a China rose, so often starts flowering very early. Often it's flowering at Christmas and it can be flowering in literally 11 12 months of the year. Sometimes it's called Bengal Beauty, sometimes it's called Bengal Tiger. I've seen several different variations of it. Um but it's lovely.

[00:05:55]You see all these buds coming on? It's got out in full flower. Lots of buds coming on. It's quite large. I'll probably hack it back next year to get it lower, but I've repeated it throughout this border. Um, and I took a lot from cutings and it it's a very favorite rose of mine. Pretty easy.

[00:06:14]China roses are slightly more tender than a lot of roses, but I've never had any problems with it in the East Midlands. So, there's another one. And now for my next one at the other end of the garden. I'll let me show you that.

[00:06:26]Now, this is a plant that I didn't really warm to to begin with, and it's schwazia. And instead of the usual schwaza tanata or chisia tanata, uh, which is a Mexican orange blossom, this is dwittiana Aztec pearl. And it's got a much more divine well thinner leaf. It's very fine leaf. But it's interesting because when you read the books about this plant, um it says grow full sunshine. So here it's grown in pretty heavy shade. Um I think it's slightly stunted by the horn beams because it should grow to sixt high there. Again, the shade because it's very dry soil anyway. And then we've got these big tree roots sucking out every bit of moisture possible. And look at the way it responds. Um, I I think it's fabulous. It flowers now. It's probably been flowering for a month. It will probably go on for another month. Um, so probably April, May, and then it'll flower again later on in the summer. So, we get another burst of it. Um, and it's a bit of a malign plant, I suppose. I think Schwazia was a is perhaps conceived as a bit of an oldfashioned plant, but I think it's a it's a really good doer. And what I love about the ordinary tanata, and there's no reason you couldn't do the same with this, is that you can use it as a hedge. And if you want it as a flowering hedge, then obviously it would be quite a loose hedge. It wouldn't be a tight hedge like a U. It would be a more buom hedge. And in order to cut it, you would cut it after flowering. Um, and then you would hopefully get, I would think, two flushes of flowers. Um, but it it's good because you can it's very fast growing for an evergreen hedge.

[00:08:16]Incredibly so. We use it on one job and the ordinary this is the ordinary tanata forms a nice evergreen hedge within a few years. Uh, but it obviously is you use it for completely different reasons than you would a u hedge. It's it's not so formal and structural, but it's very pretty. And you can see I can see the hoverflies um and butterflies working around it. Um and so obviously with this amount of flowers, it's really pulling in the insect for its nectar.

[00:08:49]And Mexican orange blossom is caused that because of the fragrance. Now I don't know if it's just too high in the sun. It is just too past its prime for pushing out the fragrance. It's not hugely fragrant. I think perhaps it's not as fragrant as the ordinary tomata.

[00:09:07]Anyway, don't discard it. Put it in and enjoy it. And I think this is just three plants. I It certainly won't be more than three. I don't think it might even just be one and it's just sprawled all the way along. And it's limbs are arching as it gets the shade and it's sort of pushing out. So I I think it's brilliant almost I'd call it high ground cover for very dry shade. Now the next thing is the wayfairing bush or the wayfairing tree and it's viburnum lantana. Now this is native. It this is a selfseed. Okay. And I I can't remember when it arrived maybe three years ago.

[00:09:46]And as you can see I've it was a shrub and so I've made it into three stems and I'm going to make it into a multi- stem.

[00:09:55]Um, and I'm I'll just pull the I'll just rub these out so that all the energy goes up rather than on these. I'll do it with a pair of secrets properly when you're not watching. Um, but I I think it's magnificent and I use it in many different ways in the garden. I've got it in a mixed countryside hedge which I'll show you in a minute. Um, it that's probably its most common use. You see it in n as a native hedro plant mixed in with hawthorne and other things like that. But to my mind, um this long flowering plant which is deciduous, it doesn't really look native. It looks really quite exotic. It's got slightly grayer backs to it. Again, it's flowers, these composite little flowers, pull in hoverflies and butterflies and all sorts of insects. Um it will grow up to tree proportions. It will go up to four or five meters, I think, if you let it. Um, and it also has berries. It has lovely red berries in the autumn. Mildly toxic to us, but the birds love them, which is why they're seated around. The birds come and have a good munch and then poop them out and they pop up all over the place. I do weed some out because it is so prolific. But when they land in a spot that I like, and I like this, and and as I pull it up, I don't want to it to obscure the totally obscure the peers, but I like it to soften them. And I'll just remove odd bits. If it get if it's showing too much of that, removing too much of the pier, I'll just remove odd bits willy-nilly. Frankly, it would put up with anything. You know, it tolerates drought. It tolerates shade a bit. Has wonderful autumn color. So, I think sometimes, you know, you can find native plants that really love it with you and they give them a bit of encouragement and they are such wonderful performers. So here you can see this viburnum lantern again itself seeded and it was growing under a huge willow which suppressed it hence this one side of nature. Now you can see it's thrown up the shoots in the other direction. Now it's got light from that direction. It's coming up from there. Um and so what I will probably do is rub out some of those so I have a better form of tree because I like it. It it's only beneficial. You couldn't get an easier plant that gives so much autumn color, berries, flowers, wildlife, aesthetics for everyone. Fabulous. And then underneath me here is a plant that I often bang on about, so I won't say too much. And um this is just comfy that it's symphfum hidkut blue. And this is the ground cover that is probably the least work of any ground cover in the world. It's pretty evergreen in the winter unless it's really hard. You still have some canopy, not like this.

[00:12:47]And then early spring, it's probably February, March, really early spring this year. It zooms up into producing all these flowers and the bees go completely bonkers over. It's just covered in bees. And it will be like this. It produces so much nectar for such a long period and it produces so many flowers that it must be one of the most perfect pulling plants for insects I think in the world. Um, and you get the odd bit of bindweed in here and I just pull out. But otherwise it it just about suppresses everything and most of the bindweed. And I like it just forming this very simple under canopy. Here I've got a U which is a leftover from someone's hedge on a job and so they gave it to me and I'm shaping it up which is why it's a bit haphazardly shaped but it's only been in a year.

[00:13:37]It'll be something special soon like its mate over there. But I love the mix of informality and formality. Uh very easy. Hey Zanthy, I can see you on the border off there please darling. Come on.

[00:13:52]Um, sorry, just trying to train the dogs, but there's a I saw um Matthew Rice had a white comfrey that looked slightly less tall than mine, and that is tuberosome. It was a yellow yellowy whitey flower, and I thought that looked excellent. Now, they do have a reputation for taking over, but because this just goes up to the path, it doesn't really go any further. I get the occasional seed blow going into there, and I'll just whip them out. Um, but I think it is tremendous and it's meant to make the soil very versatile and people use it for liquid feed. So I could just cut it down, put it into a dust bin, fill it with water, let it rot for a few weeks and then just feed it to the plants. Sometimes when I'm pulling it out of places or if I'm restricting it, I just put the dead leaves on top of the plants as a mulch. And I think that actually possibly helps in increase the microorganism and possibly the fertility. I don't know. Anyway, don't discount comforts and think they're massively overbearing. This one certainly isn't too bad. There are variegated versions. There are prettier pink flowered versions. There are taller versions. Have a good look at it. Go and see the who's got the national collection. See what varieties they are and maybe pick one out. Right, let's go on to the lilac, which you can see there. And now this is in quite a shady setting, this lilac, Katherine Habamir.

[00:15:22]I don't know when I put it in, but you can see the ivy's gone mad for it. Um, and I think it's sufficiently vigorous that it won't harm it. And I quite like it then because it's got um the ivy will produce flowers for the bees in the early winter. And then it's got this.

[00:15:40]And I think it looks fine because it's all very informal here. Um and um lilacs you can really neglect them. You can really treat them roughly. There's another one I've got over there as well.

[00:15:53]Um and they will thrive in very dry situations. They like full sun. They also cope with shade as you see. Um, what I really love is when you see a really old specimen of lilac and it is like a tree and there's maybe one or two main trunks and it's a small tree and the actual shape of them become sort of quintessentially um sort of branching and twisted and it they've just full of character. Um, and usually they're about sort of 60 years old or something when they get to that.

[00:16:27]So, I might not see this job become like that, but it's pretty good, I think. Um, and I've taken cutings of this, and I've got one in the front of the house, which I've trained up as a standard, which I'll show you. And that's very easy to do. And I take cutings just after they've come into leaf. Um, and I'll take a softwood cutting and I'll put it into my little um, aqua propagator. Um, and they've got the scent.

[00:16:57]They put up with neglect. They perform.

[00:17:00]What's not to like about lilacs? They're just absolutely wonderful. I always remember on my first book, Family Gardens, we were looking for a cover shot and in one of my clients garden, they had a whole sort of grove of really old lilacs that looked fantastic. We went there with a photographer and they weren't quite out enough. They were just in bud. So he said, "Oh, we'll come back if that's okay in a couple of weeks." I think I was doing a Chelsea or something at the time and we'll shoot it. And the client said, "Oh, yes, that's lovely.

[00:17:28]We'd love you to do that." Um, and there was long grass growing up underneath them, so it looked very romantic. But the clients thought, "Oh, we'll cut the grass for them." And so they mowed it and immediately it lost that magical charm. So sadly, we lost the cover shot.

[00:17:44]They did it with the best intentions, but they hadn't realized that the whole sort of informality of the long meadow grass, the big lilacs was part of the picture. But I think they're just stunning plants. So, I don't think I'd want a garden without a lilac. So, here is the Viburnum Lantana in the mix hedge. And you see it's beautiful with these lovely flowers. I can hear the bees buzzing all around me. Got hawthorne next to it. Um, we'll cut it probably in about a month, I would say.

[00:18:16]If I want to keep the berries, I should be careful but and not cut too many of the flowers back, which I'll do also because that will be nesting time. I'll make sure I check that there's no birds nesting in there. But, um, is lovely, really nice hedging plant, too. Very versatile, very easy plant. Couldn't be easier and a great performer. So this one I'm sorry to say it's just going over but it has been exceptionally dry for the last four or five weeks I would say. Um and it's everoneium pagoda. I also put it down the drive um because I'm trying to make it look quite naturalistic mainly native plants there.

[00:18:56]And I think this this sort of looks like an exotic um native plant if there is such a thing. And I I love that and it is such a good doer. So this is really dry soil here. It was underneath heavy heavy shading from the hazels which I've now removed and every year it comes back and back and you can see it's really increased and I just love it. And it's it's very it's a bulbless what they call a bulbous perennial. So you plant little bulbs, they're cheap as chips and it's got these lovely little yellow flowers and then they go over and then it will die down. Um so I I love it. every year.

[00:19:35]It it it surprises me when I when it comes up because it seems to look it does look better and better every year.

[00:19:41]Although this isn't the best example. So if you want to have something that's a little bit unusual and not many people grow, I think it should be grown far more widely widely just try that. So this is an assignment and I'm I'm sorry to say it again is slightly past its best for now. Um but are the perennial wool flowers. So the ordinary wall flowers that we grow um are biianual.

[00:20:06]You usually plant them in sort of Julyish August or so. Yes, you sew them in July, don't you? And then you plant them out and then they flower the next year. But these come back and back. Now they are shorter live perennials. They won't go on forever. But they are so easy from cutings. And the one that everybody knows is BSM. And that is well known because it well it performs the best. it it flowers so many months a year and that is bigger and bushier I would say than these smaller jobs but there are all different forms of this is constant cheer but then there are lilac forms pale yellow orangey yellowy browns lovely color variations on them and they are all brilliant I think and as long as you remember to take cutings they seem to enjoy dry dry situations but I don't think they'd mind too much of wetter richer so they probably do better than this. Um, but I I think they're lovely and I think these new shades that they're breeding, a lot of them are really quite subtle and soft. They're not um too much well, they've just got lovely color breaks, the lovely mixes of shades and things, I think. So, they're wonderful plant, perfect for any garden, whatever size or in a pot. Now, there are hundreds of herbaceous deraniums around. So, one of my favorites is deranium fair, which is selfsewn over by the tap, which I love, and is a darker purple one. But this one is Bevven's variety. And I like this because it's got a nice light green foliage, and the flowers sort of float above the foliage, these lovely little purple flowers. And it's not too invasive, but it's just sort of covered all this space underneath. And the aliums will pop up through it. sort of nestles around this pony. Um, so it's quite a handy plant.

[00:21:58]It's coming through the hedge a bit. So I'll pull some back a bit. Um, but the the herbaceous drains are brilliant and I think you get to know which ones you like best, which ones perform longest.

[00:22:10]This one probably goes it's probably started flowering early April and it will probably go on to early July and I never bothered to cut it back or anything and it and you some people would do um and in in some winters if it's a really hard winter it will die down other winters it will stay with a little bit of green showing there are many many winning deraniums and I think there'll be very few gardens in the country and abroad that didn't have you know one or two at least least of them because they're so useful. So, here's the um standard lie that I took from a cutting from the other shrub. Um and as you can see, it's just full of flowers and it's in this pot and it has a a pretty poor life really if you think about it. It's all confined to the pot.

[00:22:59]It's in a very hot, dry situation, but it still performs. And I always remember Michael Parkinson, the lovely late broadcaster, in his garden. He had I think it was six white standard lilacs in big pots on his terrace. Absolutely made the garden. They were a really stunning show. So another word for the wonderful lilac.

[00:23:22]This isn't flowering but I think you should see it cuz it's galactitis and um it's got this amazing foliage and then it has this lovely pink sisly type flower and as you can see it's just seeded in. I should pull some of them out. It's going it's going far too far.

[00:23:38]But I think it's lovely when you see an individual specimen just popping up there as it is in front of that fig. So that that's a real joy uh to have been given by someone and um I love it. That sort of verdigree color of its foliage I think is spot on for me. So those are few flowers that I think are really easy and are fantastic performers that are flowering at this time in sort of towards the end of the April in the UK.

[00:24:06]I haven't mentioned my old friend here the wisteria because we've mentioned many times before and I although it's a great performer we have more queries with questions on how to prune and train it than any other plant on gardens question time I think. But what I would say is just notice how the south facing bit is really fully in bloom because that's the hottest and this on the east facing is behind it. But I quite like that because it prolongs the flowering.

[00:24:34]And the one I've got against the south wall of the house, I don't do any pruning or anything. The only thing I do is I just cut it off when it gets into the gutters and it still flowers like stink. Anyway, there we are. a few great flowers that you might want to try in your garden, too.