After a long winter (and, recently, winters have felt very long) the arrival of spring flowers puts a spring in your step. I love the common-or-garden squill, Puschkinia scilloides. Its pale porcelain-blue flowers are so delicate and elegant. They thrive in well-drained soil or in low grass as long as you put off mowing it until their leaves have died down.
They only grow to about 10cm (4ins) tall so you need to plant lots of them to have any great effect. They are cheap enough to plant by the hundred, not by the dozen.
In the wild they grow in Lebanon, Turkey and the Caucasus. The genus contains only two species and commemerates an eighteenth century chemist and plant hunter with the wonderful name of Count Apollos Apollosovich Mussin-Pushkin who, near the end of his life in 1802, led a plant-hunting expedition to the Caucasus.
