How to make your glorious spring colours last

When mixed with Glory of the Snow (Chionodoxa) and drumstick primula you are guaranteed to wow anyone that has an ounce of interest in nature's diverse beauty.

To ensure your display looks good for the longest time, pick off all the faded flower heads as the petals wilt so the plant doesn't spend all its energy creating seed heads. While these bulbs are in leaf you also need to feed them so they can regenerate new flower buds deep inside the bulbs.

For really best results, you should dress the soil with a high potash plant food. This can be used in the autumn when you are planting up your bulb display or in spring while the plants have foliage to turn these nutrients in to energy.

Feeding is top priority all around the garden, especially for herbaceous plants and summer flowering shrubs and trees that are bursting into growth again. An all-purpose plant food is ideal.

After feeding, it's time to support tall growing perennials such as delphiniums, rudbeckia and lupins so that high winds do not instantly damage their growth. Provide support while the plants are small. Where these are grown in a large clump of several plants you can construct a sturdy cage from twigs through which the flowering stems can grow.

Alternatively, for individual plants you can buy suitable supports made from plastic-coated wire.

Last, but not least, it's time to protect these new herbaceous plants from the ravages of slugs and snails with pellets or a liquid formula (or, if you don't want to use chemicals, any home-made remedy – beer traps, hollowed-out grapefruit skins; broken egg shells etc).

YP MAG 1/5/10