April’s palette turns electric when euphorbias unleash their vivid colours, often outlasting and outshining other spring favourites

The latest from Carol's beautiful cottage garden… plus her diary for the week!

Erysimum Rysi Copper One of the definitions of a wallflower is that of a shy and awkward person with whom nobody wants to dance: I am sure we have all felt like that at some point in our adolescence.

Picotee-pink-edged, large flowers that look at you from a tall stem. Followed by marbled evergreen leaves. A sterile cultivar from Rodney Davey, it flowers prolifically as its energy is saved for flow

I love the delicate, open, airy height provided by Anthriscus sylvestris so early in the year, with a drama and elegance like few other spring-flowering perennials. Its off-white flowers and burgundy

Modest, alluring and versatile, Viola odorata, or sweet violet, is a small, hardy, herbaceous perennial that tumbles and scrambles close to the ground, forming dense clumps of dainty, heart-shaped, gr