If you have not already done so,  April is the perfect month to order your summer-flowering container plants and perennials, which will provide plenty of colour this year and , in the case of perennials, for many seasons to come.  For example, take a look at our stunning British-bred Begonias Buffy, Peardrop and Lemondrops, all of which are ‘tailor-made’ for baskets and other containers where their great beauty can be appreciated at close quarters.  Buffy is an ‘exclusive’ from Mr Fothergill’s Direct and is a stunning blend of rich, creamy, fully double flowers with soft, pink flushes to their outer petals.  Borne in profusion, the flowers look even more beautiful against the lush, dark green, healthy foliage.  We guarantee this will be a real head-turner in this year’s displays!

Begonia Peardrop has fully double, salmon orange flowers, each with a  golden centre, while Lemondrops is a smaller flowered ‘multiflora’ with citrus yellow, semi-double heads.  Both are very free flowering all summer long and look superb either grown alone or in conjunction with Buffy. 

Also British-bred are our Tumbelina Petunias – in fact they were developed very close to our Suffolk headquarters.  We firmly believe these are the best double flowered, trailing petunias on offer anywhere in the world.  They really do take some beating.  Perhaps the best well known of the Tumbelinas is Priscilla, named after the breeder’s wife, and it has the added advantage of being beautifully perfumed.

Echinaceas and Heucheras are back in vogue, thanks to the recent excellent breeding work which has been going on with these once-neglected perennials.  Our new Echinceas Irresitible and Marmalade are both double flowered and are perfect both for displays in borders and as cut flowers.  Both are brand new, so now is the time to grow these and impress all visitors to your garden this summer with their richly coloured, exuberant blooms.

Heucheras are grown mainly for their foliage – and what foliage when you take a look at our six, brand new named varieties, which have the widest range of leaf colours we know.  They are a treat in containers and will do equally well in borders, where they are great for providing ground cover and suppressing weeds.  The beautiful heucheras will provide interest for most of the year, so they are wonderful value-for-money.

On the vegetable front, if you have a greenhouse, sowings of runner and French beans, sweet corn and courgette can all be made in April, but remember to give the seedlings some protection on nights when frost threatens.  Horticultural fleece or old newspapers are ideal for shielding them against the cold.  Do try our new and exclusive dwarf French bean Trofeo, an early and productive white-seeded variety which has outstanding disease resistance.  The tender, pencil-pods are really tasty and any surplus will freeze well.  We have re-introduced that great old favourite runner bean Crusader.  It has an excellent reputation as a long-podded exhibition variety, but the beans it yields have an excellent flavour, so it is certainly not just for the show bench.  Crusader has a real old fashioned, ‘beany’ flavour.

Home-grown sweet corn knocks spots off bought cobs when it comes to flavour – and our brand new variety Mr Bojangles is no exception.  The attractive bicolour cobs are bursting with tenderness and sweetness, while the plants have early vigour so they get off to a flying start.  We urge you to try this impressive new variety, which combines the best characteristics of the sugary enhanced and supersweet types. 

Spring has been late in many parts of the country, and we have certainly seen this to be the case here in Suffolk.  But now that spring does finally seem to be in the air, outdoor sowings of many vegetables can be made direct in their cropping positions.  And if sowings are a little later than in some years, the seedlings will soon make up for lost time so that in a few weeks’ time we will have forgotten the later start.  Remember that many crops,  such as spring onion, radish, lettuce, spinach and rocket, are best sown little and often – about every three weeks – to ensure a continuous supply through the summer and into autumn.