Louise Curley celebrates spring’s homegrown and low-carbon blooms, showing how to pick for months and arrange them in garden-gathered style

Spring is unfurling in Fiona Cumberpatch’s container garden in Lincolnshire and she’s appreciating every small stage

I’m bringing my summer stars

In the garden, hellebores and snowdrop bulbs are emerging through the wintry ground, while beyond, in borrowed views, dangling catkins and blossom-laden blackthorn branches sway in the hedgerows. Thes

I like the slow-quick-slow burn of early spring, with the leaves unfurling slowly but surely. Some plants are decidedly cautious; whitebeams and catalpa won’t show themselves for weeks, while impatien

What’s your opinion of artificial flowers? Are they naff? Way back, as a horticultural student, I and a few mates had some cards printed, which we would leave alongside plastic flower arrangements in