Today the world outside my window is looking completely beautiful with a white frost icing the trees and the sun’s light adding extra loveliness. Everything is frozen as hard as metal, but thankfully most things in the garden will spring back into growth when the weather warms up this week.

Next Sunday, 29th January, I will be at the Wolvercote Commumity Market at the White Hart pub with a small stall. There will be a selection of Spring bulbs for sale: some, like the fragrant paperwhite narcissi and hyacinths are best kept inside to make you smile and enjoy their colour and heady scent close up, while others such as the iris reticulata, snowdrops, dwarf narcissi and crocus can be enjoyed inside or out. All these bulbs (apart from the paperwhites) will come back and can be placed in their pots /planted outside once they have flowered to brighten up late Winter/early Spring again next year.

This is likely to be the only market for the plant stall until March and some of the bulbs have a little growing to do before flowering. For me that’s part of the pleasure of having them and you can speed them up by bringing them in to the warmth or leave them outside to develop in their own time. The delicate looking iris reticulata, crocus and dwarf narcissi are extremely tough and will survive the very worst of the weather outside while offering much needed food for early pollinators.

Here’s a sample of what will be on the stall this Sunday:

Spring Bulbs in Pots:

Scented indoor paper white Narcissus, Ziva and Inbal; scented hyacinths; iris reticulata, Alida, Purple Hill and George; dwarf narcissi, Artic Bells and Golden Bells and crocus Prins Claus and others too.

The bulbs come planted in peatfree compost in a range of different sized pots including old terracotta, metal and plastic. Each pot is individually priced from £1.50 for individual bulbs in plastic pots to £12.00 for a collection of bulbs in a pot.

All pots can be returned to me for reuse if not needed.

There will also be cheering violas for sale. Grown from home gathered seed in small pots last Autumn they have kept going through all weathers. Deep frost makes their heads droop, but they immediately recover their spring in the thaw. They are ideal for outdoor containers and window boxes and will give beautiful splashes of colour for months. In shades of purple and blues so far. 7cm pot: £1