Known as dinosaur grass because it is one of the oldest known plants this is a very statuesque and interesting, hollow grass a bit like bamboo. It has cone type "flowers" on the tips. It also spreads and is in danger of strangling the Lobelia Cardinalis as it moves out of the planter it was put in and colonises those next door.

Lovely foliage, small shrub (40 cms) with broom type, pink flowers in summer. Hardy. Likes full sun.

I love foxgloves but they seem to come and go. This one supposedly is a perennial foxglove so in 2012 I planted one in the ground and one in a pot to see how they performed. They were both very striking with pink outer and spotted yellow/pink white interior flowers. It responds well to deadheading and throws up new flower heads, flowering all Summer and tends to be multi-stemmed.

Over winter I did nothing to the one in the veg bed and the one in the pot was left outdoors but kept pretty dry.

And, lo and behold in 2013, even though the one in the pot looked pretty manky, I tidied it up, watererd it and it is now covered in five flower spikes. The one in the bed is also coming up but is slower (it's in the shade). I am thrilled because it is a lovely foxglove and the recent Which?Garden report on best foxgloves didn't include it because theirs hadn't repeated!

It is often difficult to find early colour for the Hot bed. Reds and oranges seem to come later except as tulips, so this one is useful and just red enough to justify its position under the climbing roses in the Hot bed.

Very reliable early flowers and fab shapes. Long lasting.

Very reliable early colour and fun shapes.

I love delphiniums especially the old fashioned, more single flowered blue ones, but they don't love my clay or the slugs. I haven't grown them now for a few years but since I seem to have dealt the slugs a blow with three years of nematodes I might try again in 2013.

This is a wonderful Daphne. I cannot praise it enough. It is easy to grow and flowers when little else does from December through to April. It is evergreen and fabulously scented. My neighbour has planted one too, just the other side of the fence so we get a vertiable wall of scent through the Winter months. They are both now about 2 m high.

This promised to be a sweet, small Daphne with cream margins to the leaves which would flower through the Spring and summer but it gave up the ghost very quickly whereas Sir Peter Smithers continues to go from strength to strength. |I must try it again in a different place.

This is the star of the Hot bed. Grown as a tree not a shrub it now has a 30 cm trunk. It is semi-evergreen with silver grey leaves and huge yellow, pineapple shaped flower clusters that the bees adore and are scented of pineapple. It responds well to pruning and looks great all year. The perfect tree for a small garden because it does everything, is not too big and casts only light shade.