While there are few things in the home quite as seasonal as its garden, there’s no reason that things should look drab at any given time of year. During summer and spring, there’s ample opportunity to inject a few bursts of colour here and there. But even during winter and autumn, we can perk things up with a little bit of careful planning.

So how do you go about creating a garden that will yield vibrant colour all year round?

Start with a plan

If you get all of your ideas down, you’ll be able to identify where you’re going to keep and what you’re going to dispense with. The rest of your gardening efforts can be informed by what you decide at this stage.

Dig up the things you don’t want

While it might be difficult to deal with a huge amount of garden waste at once during the lockdown, that doesn’t mean that you can’t generate it. Dig up all of those bushes, flowers and shrubs that you’ve picked out as being surplus to requirements.

Get some structures in place

Now it’s time to lay down all of the structural elements that will give your garden its shape. You want to space out your evergreen elements so that they provide structure at all times of year. If you concentrate those hardy green bushes at one end of the garden, and have the other end devoted to summer-flowering plants, then you’ll end up creating an imbalance.

Don’t neglect lighting

If you’re spending time out in your garden after dusk, then you’ll want to ensure you have some artificial lights to keep things looking perky. These can either be unobtrusive and invisible, or they can be features in and of themselves. Look through the Cox & Cox catalogue and pick out something that matches your tastes.

Try skipping a season

If you determine that it’s too late to prepare for summer, then you might decide consciously to skip it and to put all of your efforts into preparing for the autumn. Given that we’ve all got such a lot of time on our hands, this might seem a little conservative – but it’s better to get things right and to build up your experience (and confidence) in the garden.

Concentrate winter flowers where they’re most effective

When the cold weather rolls around again, you’ll be spending less time in your garden. But you will be spending at least a little bit of time there, and thus it’s worth focussing those winter-flowering plants where they’ll be most visible. This might mean entranceways and front gardens.

Use pots

However great your plan is, it will need to stand up to the pressure of reality. If your garden starts to develop, and you change your mind about some particular element or other, then a little bit of flexibility can be vital. A few potted plants will allow you to add and subtract elements of your garden as you go along, and rearrange things just to see what the result might be. Experimentation is vital, especially when you don’t have the experience – so make the investment in a few choice pots.