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!Ever fancied breeding your very own new colours of hellebore? Carol explained how, making it look remarkably easy. That's another thing I'll enjoy doing when mine come into flower soon.No gardening programme would be complete without, in Carol's words

available.2. Snowdrops: The first sign of life. Best not planted as bulbs, though. They should be planted in about March ‘in the green’. This means that they are dug up after flowering and planted then.3. Iris reticulata: really, really special. A gorgeous

, at the edges of ponds and rivers. These include bleeding heart (left), monarda, astilbe, actaea, Solomon's seal, toad lily, Himalayan blue poppy and heuchera.Damp shadeThere are even plants suitable for growing in the darkest corner, such as butcher's broom

, and reaches a height and spread of 90 x 8cm.Allium sphaerocephalonSedum spectabile has flat, tightly-packed heads of pink flowers over blue-green rosettes of succulent foliage in autumn. It thrives in poor soil and grows to a height and spread of 45cm

imported topsoil, then tried (and failed) to sow a lawn from seed.I watched the evolution of the plot from courtyard to garden as more and more creatures visited it - blue tits and great tits, a robin, blackbird, bumblebees, butterflies, moths, slugs

blues, and speckled woods.The hoverflies have appeared in earnest, and bumbles, wasps and solitary bees are everywhere. There is an audible hum, usually only heard in June. They are all squabbling over the raspberry flowers. Pond-skaters are frolicking

instead of flowers.But the rebel in me only goes so far. I do like a straight line, so within the triangles I still grow the veg in rows. It's practical, and makes things easy to plant and harvest. But most of all it just looks so satisfyingly good.I use

.Houseleeks are most valued for their distinctive rosettes of succulent, spirally patterned foliage, although they also bear attractive flowers from spring to summer. Each rosette is a separate plant, and is monocarpic - it flowers once then dies, but is soon replaced

. Many people will have received digital cameras from Santa and will soon discover how unbelievably useful they can be. See a plant you like in a friend's garden? Click. See a spectacular border? Click. Notice a great combination at a flower show? Click

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