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The Victorians knew their plants, and the gorgeous hot water plant, achimene, was one of their favourites. Who can resist the charms of this little beauty, a relative of the African violet and Cape primrose. I'm a great fan of the gesneriad family

This is prime iris season: a few weeks when these hugely flamboyant flowers come into their own. I grow two different sorts of iris in my garden: the Siberian iris and the bearded iris. Siberian irises are smaller flowered, have thinner leaves

!) Growing so easily from seed makes me wonder why I've never spotted it in any seed catalogues before, but there it is in both the Chiltern Seeds and Thompson & Morgan catalogues - a packet containing 150 seeds costs less than a third of the price I paid

anything too deeply - especially plants like this violet that is making the effort to grow already.As I have said before I make a lot of compost here but there is never enough to mulch the whole garden so, every other year I buy a trailer load of the stuff

the distractions of computers and mobile phones, it seems that 11-year-old young ladies still imagine themselves frolicking in a flower garden with a trug across their arm.We've already got a bed of blood-red dahlias, which provide a lot of flowers for the house

in spring. But it's suited to larger ponds. There's water crowfoot (Ranunculus aquatilis) and frogbit (Hydrocharis morsus-ranae), which are both adorable and suitable for growing in part-shade. The Postcode Plants Database also recommends water-violet