The colour blue - so very elusive, has haunted my springs since I became a gardener...but proved surprisingly difficult in my sunny gardens. Apart from the usual larkspur and the short lived flash of Siberian iris, I contented myself with autumn sown cornflowers...and then, I bought a wood and it was game on again. In the grey English climate, spring blues can seem washed out, dull and a bit pointless...unlike the blazing skies of southern Europe, the light intensity is low in April and May - we have to lift our spirits with deep pinks, lime, purples. But in a woodland, shaded and cool, those blue flowers are incomparable.

The iconic bluebells proved problematic, either unhappy in grass and showing a tendency to dominate everything else. After the few weeks of brilliance, there is, quite literally, nothing for the rest of the year apart from increasingly sordid foliage. Mertensia, my next wheeze, have been slow to get going and immediately eaten by deer. This year though, I am hedging my bets with an all-out blue surge starting with the most successful - myosotis sylvatica. Lindelofia longiflora, pulmonaria, omphalodes verna and hepatica nobilis are already in place...and then I looked at cynoglossum. Whereupon I went a tad crazy, ordering c.amabile (Chinese forget me not), c.nervosa (hairy forget me not) c.hungaricum (Pink f.m.n) and our native c.officianale. Houndstooth - where have you been all my life, hiding away while bugloss, borage, comfrey and alkanet have romped in the foreground?

In case it wasn't also bit obvious, it is biennial sowing time. Terrific plants - often much better than autumn sown annuals, which fill that awkward space after the spring bulbs and before the first June flushes of everything else. I am also having a go with the enormous chimney bellflower - campanula pyramidalis this year. Anyone else getting that seed sowing itch?