Winter is most definitely still with us, but these bright days have a wonderful optimism about them.

The garden is waking up, and many plants are starting to grow shoots already – I am looking out at my roses and see a haze of green.

There should always be colour in the garden, and it is easy to achieve this if you plant the right plants!
Bulbs are the obvious splashes of colour, with snowdrops showing, and daffodils making a very early appearance this year.
Muscari is about to flower, with crocus quick to follow. I have hundreds of Crocus ‘Romance' already in flower, creating a carpet of pale yellow.
I planted these just in front of our beehives as an early source of pollen for the bees, and any other pollinators out on a sunny day. Tulips will flower a bit later, along with hyacinths, which are my favourite! If you did not put down bulbs in Autumn, September or October, then do not despair! There are lots of bulbs available potted up, and these will come back year after year.
In my opinion, every garden should have at least a few of the following plants. At the front of any border, there should be a (few) Pulmonaria.
Growing only to about 20cm, they start to flower in February and continue right through March.
The brightest blue, ‘Blue Ensign’, an uplifting pink ‘Raspberry Splash’ and a deep purple, aptly named ‘Dark Vader’, are among my favourites.
Their foliage is also very pretty, with silvery splotches on a dark green leaf.
Winter flowering Heathers will continue to flower throughout the spring, I found the varieties available this year to be very varied. However, ‘Kramer’s Red' is still one of my go to's - it is reliable, it does not get too scraggly and is early to flower. Heather, along with pulmonaria, are also excellent sources of nectar for our winged friends. Apart from flowering, many Heathers also produce brightly coloured new foliage, such as ‘Spring Torch’.

Eranthis hyemalis, or winter aconite, is a pretty yellow flower, which happily naturalises under trees.
The epithet ‘hyemalis’ means winter-flowering, and indeed, this plant flowers during the coldest months.
Forsythia is a common shrub, flowering yellow before the leaves appear. I am not a great fan of the large varieties, ‘Sugar Baby’ is a cute variety that stays small and is very pretty tucked away in a border. Hamamelis, or Witch Hazel, is also an early flowering plant mine unfurled its spidery auburn flowers on Christmas day, well, I passed by it on the way to the wormery, and imagined it had started flowering as a gift to me!
Certainly, its scent should make Hamamelis a must-have, a mixture of vanilla and jasmine, which, on a sunny day is discernible from quite a distance. The flowers curl back into themselves when it is close to free6, to prevent frost damage. Nature is so amazing isn’t it?
The only drawback is the cost of this plant, you would expect to pay €20 for what looks like a twig in a pot.

The first few years are slow going, but once it reaches a certain point, it starts to grow and thicken.
It is not fussy and tolerates any soil, as well as wind. Some varieties to look out for are: ‘Early Bright’, one of the first to flower, bearing bright yellow blooms. ‘Kohanki red’ has orangey-red flowers, and its foliage rivals any reds in the autumn. ‘Aphrodite’ has bronze coloured flowers, and is a nice sized shrub for a medium-sized garden. ‘Diane' has bright orange flowers, and possibly the best scent of all.