Flower gardening consists of just three things: creating successive images in time; creating each image in space; and keeping the peace. It looks like hard work for those who don’t enjoy grubbing about a little but once you have achieved the first two objectives, all that is left from year to year is regularly keeping the peace.

Creating successive images in time involves the simple understanding of growing periods and taking account of them. Spring flowers: snowdrops, grape hyacinths and crocuses come, brighten our lives, but then die away and store food for next year. If we did nothing more there would be no garden, but fortunately if we had planted anemones, primulae and primroses they will take over the flowering chore before daffodils and tulips fill the scene and a little later the irises will provide massive banks of color.

This sequence is not happenchance. Because you know the sequence, the bulbs and corms can be planted together so that as the snowdrops and crocuses die away in March the narcissi, daffodils, and tulips, all bloom from exactly the same soil. Each bulb and corm knows when it is its time to emerge in the garden play.

The same goes on all year as the irises and peonies finish their cycle, delphiniums and poppies come into bloom in May, and as they finish their cycle in turn, the Gloriosa black-eyed Susans and sun flowers fill the beds for July and August. Then come Hosa lilies, lavender, and more.

While this is going on, the chrysanthemums and aster bushes are growing in the knowledge that they will be needed in September and October before those snowdrops appear again in January.

So a careful gardener learns the sequence and takes care to ensure color the whole year around by ensuring that each contributor is present ready and willing. Early flowers tend to be white, giving way to reds, and in my garden, a host of summer yellow varieties. Fine tuning from year to year involves introducing different colors for variety.

As backup, a good selection of roses throughout the garden provides color all summer long and herbs provide the scents.

Creating each image in space is nothing more than installing plants so that tall ones thrive at the back of a border while successively smaller ones occupy the front ranks. In that way a three-dimensional painting is created with nothing lurking behind taller companions. It’s very like taking one of those mass school photographs in which, if you didn’t exercise