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. Persicaria officinalis (or orientalis) is about 2m high with sturdy stems that don't need staking and heavenly hanging pink flowers. In America it goes by the name of Kiss Me Over The Garden Gate, which is another big selling point.I'm sure there are lots

want early or late flowers, I suppose. Bees don't care either way and just want to get stuck in! The other annual climber of which I am very fond is Cobea scandens. My wife and I have a competition each year to see who can grow the best specimen

of colour and life; in the majority of cases this is to be welcomed. Hooray for the resurgence of tulips, whoopee for the return of the rose and yippee for the arrival of annuals.However, there are some plants which I am not looking forward to seeing again

) have started flowering. (They are annuals and not to be confused with the beefier oriental poppies - like this striking red Papaver orientale 'Beauty of Livermere'.)These are one of my most favourite flowers: so delicate, so unbelievably beautiful

m, flowers May/June.Allium 'Globemaster': a huge and spectacular mauvey number, with tight packed petals. Height 0.8m, flowers May/June.Allium hollandicum: probably the most popular variety. Dark purple, perky tennis ball sized flowerheads. Height 1m

to the sweet pea.The best I can find is a cowboy song that was a hit in 1966 "Sweet pea / Apple of my eye /  Don't know when and I don't know why". Nice but not exactly horticulturally relevant.*Anyway, sweet peas are flowering now. Lathyrus odoratus

, your safest bet is the white double Dianthus 'Mrs Sinkins' which smells like the wrists of wood nymphs. It's one of the old garden pinks (great scent, short flowering season, most of them about 30cm high) and was originally bred in 1868 by John Sinkins

to keep wearing the same size trousers. I could fly off somewhere hot, but sadly that's not terribly practical. Instead, my cheap and easy solution is to talk about summer flowers, with the only proviso being that they can be any colour at all except white

on such small bits of card!Another is a series of fifty garden flowers ranging from delphiniums and water lilies to annuals like bright red salvias and candytuft. Each card has a bit of information and some hints about cultivation written by Richard Sudell - who

there are seedheads of annual poppies. There are still some in flower but they are very late - usually because they have sown themselves somewhere a little shadier or generally less conducive to enthusiastic growth.Left untroubled, the ripened and fading carcasses