My aim is to have a brilliantly colourful, productive patch for as many months as possible, and April is the kitchen garden’s first paintbox peak. Spring’s edible flowers now mix with an array of hyacinths, followed by tulips and the showiest of the salads and leafy greens (such as rainbow chard and kale ‘Redbor’), as well as purple leeks and the foliage of globe artichokes. Together this gives us full-on colour razzmatazz, which I love.
Central to all parts of the garden are tulips and, as with dahlias, we scatter tulip petals over salad. In November we plant hundreds of bulbs through the vegetables, selecting varieties we’ve found to be most perennial, so they come up reliably year after year, such as ‘Green Wave’, ‘Spring Green’, ‘Ballerina’, ‘Mistress
