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yielded some pleasant surprises. We bought some beautiful and inexpensive cyclamen, which came in a variety of colours, including rich velvety red, pure white and a lovely flamingo pink. My children demanded that we bought a variegated orange

as cut flowers). I saw them at the base of street trees, gleefully mixed in with bright chrysanthemums and lipstick-pink cyclamen. Not  a very conventional mixture but certainly striking.There are variations: this one has a good solid evergreen box edge

, flowers June/July.Allium moly 'Jeannine': double stemmed with yellow flowers. Height 0.5m, flowers May/June.Allium unifolium: a pink flowered variety, shortish (25cm) but good for cutting. Height 0.5m, flowers May/June.

and produce flower after flower until about early December. Perhaps we should be growing more of them. Good garden varieties include 'Clara Curtis' (pink), 'Emperor of China' (double pink) and 'Wedding Day' (white). You can read more about chrysanthemums here.

three metres.M. soulangeana is much bigger - you can see it dominating many front gardens in streets all over the country. It has bigger cup shaped flowers which carry a striking pink tinge to their petals. They reach up to eight metres in height

, or show off their blooms with decorative mulches in pots.Our favourite varietiesThe rose-pink flowers of T. platystigma bear traces of orange running through the petals, becoming clearer towards the margins. Height 60cm.Tulipa platystigmaThis species

blown away by their scent. I also like Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’, which produces clusters of tiny rose-pink flowers on bare stems from October to March. However, I’ve seen too many viburnums growing in ‘municipal’ settings to want to grow them in my

flower for cutting. This year we're growing 'Dazzler', which has gorgeous deep pink petals.Sweet peas are another must for any cutting garden. If you haven't got your plants going already, you could invest in some plug plants (mail order is much better

of apple trees to swell, flushed with pink, before the pure white flowers burst open. As my main reason for growing apple trees is for their fruit, I'm keen that the trees produce abundant blossom, and also that there will be plenty of bees to enjoy it

stripes with age. It rarely flowers, but may produce beautiful pink, puffball blooms. Albizia julibrissin grows to a height of 12m.Albizia julibrissinThe paper-bark maple is a slow-growing small tree with dark green leaves that turn a rich, crimson colour