The third week of March. We have been through blossom (fleeting, and not resilient in the face of the endless wet we have had) and the first daffodils (too yellow but the slugs loved them) and we have now landed in the most perfect of moments. There are flowers everywhere.

This morning, I washed some bottles and dug out my snips from wherever they were. Then I just wandered around the courtyard and the kitchen garden and collected what I found there.

Not barefoot obviously. It’s still March.

The cools, the blues and the yellows, I put into bottles. The silver of the pussy willow is a cheat, and I nipped it off the tree at the end of last night’s dog walk.

The warms, the purples and the reds of the hellebores and the tulips, I cut with one hand and collected in the other, and then I found I had made the most perfect bouquet. It’s been a very long time, but it felt so fitting for the new gardening year. Absolutely made by the akebia vine; if you don’t have one, get one.

It’s spring and it is so easy to be in love. I hope you love this too.

the fresh and the cool

Ingredients:

• Primroses from the lawn

• Bluebells from the front garden

• Flowering rosemary (‘Miss Jessop’s Upright’ always)

• Pussy willow from the field

• Narcissus ‘Silver Chimes’ (I am definitely getting some more of these)

• Narcissus ‘Minnow’ (and old favourite)

• Grape hyacinths from the cobbles that surround the cottage

The warm and the smoky

Ok, so the perennial wallflowers have come out a bit orange, but in real life, they are the most perfect pink, peach, dusk combination. These have flowered their socks off for months now and I cannot recommend them highly enough. They really do just add a little something. I bought Erysimum ‘Constant Cheer’ and E. ‘Pastel Patchwork’ as plugs a few years ago, and they have earned their keep every day. In fact, I might source some others. I quite fancy E. 'Caribbean Island', despite its rather trashy name.

OTHER INGREDIENTS:

• The first tulips, including the first ‘Belle Epoque’, looking slightly moth-eaten if I’m honest

• Hellebores, lots of them

• Akebia vine, the five-leaved one, which is paler flowered than A. trifoliata, although I do also have one of those.

And that’s it. Collected into my hand, tied with string and then a ribbon stream and happiness in a bouquet.