Best bedding plants rather depends on what you want from your bedding display. Gardening is very personal in terms of taste and colour schemes . Most gardeners buy some bedding plants, there is universal appeal although I find I buy less over the years because bedding plants tend to be time consuming. Many need a lot of dead heading and feeding, although a splendid display of traditional bedding looks fantastic,  such as Petunia, Verbena, Pelargonium, and Lobelia, as in the image right.

Single displays can look very impressive and in the image middle right is Mesembryanthemum, the common ice plant, and it does look spectacular. As a bedding plant it does have a couple of drawbacks; the flowers only open in the sun, and so on the many overcast days which pass for summer the basket can look very dull. When it is sunny the flowers are short lived and to keep them flowering, it is essential to dead head. I don't grow them any more after spending a Sunday picking off about 70 dead heads, just too much trouble.

If you are looking for trouble free bedding plants, Pelargoniums do it for me. There are many different varieties with interesting and pattered leaves, lovely flowers which are long lasting and so  not much dead  heading involved. There are a lot more varieties than just the bedding types. The image  right is an ivy leaved with delicate and attractive flowers and leaves. An added bonus with  Pelargoniums, commonly called Geraniums, is that they are the perfect conservatory plant. They will tolerate the extreme heat of a conservatory and reward with more flowers. Pelarogoniums will flower in the conservatory almost all the year round and there are varieties with lovely scented leaves which when touched smell like lemon sherbet, and nutmeg. There are some on line specialist growers where you can buy Zonale, Scented leaved, trailing, ivy leaves, Regal and Angel Pelargoniums; the list is endless and after spending summer outside in various pots and containers bring them into the conservatory in September and they will reward you with weeks of flowers and live happily in an unheated frost free conservatory all year. One of the few plants which can tolerate the extreme heat of the summer in the conservatory and make just a great display.

I do love Pelargoniums which is why I grow them all the year round.

I have really enjoyed the scented plants in the garden during this spell of warm weather. 

Walking around the garden there are some lovely scented plants to enjoy this month. The first image left is of Wallflowers, latin name Erysimum which are coming into flower towards mid April onwards. If you haven't grown wallflowers before they are really worth while because their scent is one of the best in the garden. If you are growing for scent, pick your variety carefully. There are English and Siberian wallfowers and the English ones, latin name  Erysimum cheiri, I think have the better scent and tend to flower earlier.  These are the biennuial varieties, the perennial variety one of the most popular of which is 'Bowles Mauve' is a reliable performer and a lovely mauve as it's name suggests, but nothing like the scent of the Erysimum cheiri. This is one of the times that latin names are useful. The term "Wallflower" covers a lot of different plants whereas if you buy Erysimum cheiri, you get a precise variety with scent.

  Wallflowers team up well with Tulips  and come in a variety of colours red, yellow, orange,  salmon, mauve  crimson all shades. They are easy to grow but short lived and need regular replacement. The good news is that Wallflowers bloom for a long period and will grow in quite poor soil as long as drainage is reasonable and with plenty of sun.

Also adding scent to the garden is the Viburnum x carlcephalum, centre image left,  a deciduous form of Viburnum on which the flowers precede the leaves. It's an easy to grow shrub, with attractive well scented rounded balls of flower which will withstand being picked and brought inside. It will tolerate semi shade  and is quite vigorous growing to around 3.5m (11ft) . There are several different types of Viburnum which are easy to grow shrubs.

Amongst the scented plants it is easy to overlook the humble Daffodil or Narcissus,but there are many scented varieties which are lovely and have strong scent. Walking around the garden I could really catch the scent on the breeze and Daffodils are easily combined with another spring favourite, the Hyacinth which has merit for its strong almost electric blue and lovely scent.  Both daffodils and Hyacinth are spring flowering  bulbs planted in the Autumn which will return reliably year after year, squirrels and mice permitting.

Bliss! Great gardening weather. I am not a fair weather gardener, but the sight of such blue skies really raises the spirits as well as the trowel.

This time of year is good for planting out new shrubs. I am going to plant some Rhododendrons in a woodland part  of the garden, and have three ready in pots once the hard work of clearing the area is finished. Plants in pots can get very dry and it doesn't give a good start to the shrub or plant if it gets planted out when it is on the dry side and in an April which is dry.  It's a good idea to make sure the plant is really well watered, and the best way to do this is to put it in a tug, fill the tug up with a few inches  of water, and then stand the plant in for couple of hours or so, as in the image left.

In the same area, I am planting Pulmonaria  and Helleborus and I placed these in a shallow tray of water to ensure the roots were well watered. This is a good tip for any plant or shrub when planting out if you want to get the plants off to a good start.

Another tip, if you are growing from seed, is to keep each seed tray with one type of seed only and don't mix them up with part of the tray seeded with one type of plant and part with another. It can be tempting to use up space in the seed tray with another seed, but the problem is they will germinate and grow at different speeds, and you will end up with a tray as in the image left. The sweet peas have romped away, the Amaranthus have not and the sweet peas are ready for hardening off which would kill the Amaranthus.

The solution was to remove the Amaranthus, so it was nice to sit in the sun and prick out the young Amaranthus seedings and pot them up separately to liberate the sweet peas. The sun was wonderful, but even more wonderful was the fantastic sweet scent being blown around by the wind coming from the scented Narcissus. Planted in autumn last year the scent was powerful and I will definitely plant some more this autumn. Lovely looking and lovely scent, one of the best gardening combinations.

If you have bought from the garden centre or on line,  small vegetable plants for putting in the veg plot later in the year, the chances are they will need potting on by this stage.  Many vegetable plants are not fully  hardy, such as cucumbers, courgettes, squash, tomatoes, aubergine chillies and more which means that in most parts of the UK it is still too cold to plant them out.

The small plants get too big for the pot they were sold in. You can tell by looking at the plant and if it looks top heavy, time to pot on. This also helps the plant to develop well before finally planting out. Top tips for potting on are:

1. Pot up the plant into a larger pot but not huge -take a step up in pot size. You can see in the illustration the plants after potting on are in modest sized pots.
2. Many plants need some support. In the images are courgettes with a small support, and Tomato plants with larger supports as they will grow quite vigorously. I have used the old prunings from a Cornus cut back earlier in the year. It is a good idea to keep prunings as they make great supports for smaller plants, and often look attractive as with the red stems of the Cornus.
3. Firm the small plant in well to make sure there are no air pockets. If roots hit an air pocket is a soil cul de sac; no where to go and the roots will not thrive.
4. Water well to settle plant and soil
5. Place back under glass in greenhouse, windowsill or conservatory.
6. Gradually harden off over the next few weeks which means to place the plant outside on milder days so the plant gets accustomed to the outside weather before finally planting out ,when all risk of frost is passed.

Small veg plants are an ideal way to grow vegetables if you don't have time to sow from seed. For some plants it is easier I always buy my chillies as a small plant, I really only need the one so it's just as easy. There is just not enough time to do everything!.