Potentillas are absolutely indispensable shrubs. Amongst their virtues is the ability to grow practically anywhere in any soil except dense shade or a weeping bog. I cherish the dozen or so specimens and varieties which grow here, and enjoy the flowers which open in succession from May until September. They look a little untidy after leaf fall, but this can be forgiven in a shrub so thoroughly worthwhile.

Katherine Dykes, tall at 5 ft., opens primrose-yellow flowers throughout the summer. Klondyke, a dwarf at 18 in., has sparkling golden-yellow flowers. My own favourite, Longacre, makes a neat bush 18 in. high, and has cascades of good quality yellow blossoms. Primrose Beauty has more shape than most, with grey leaves and cream flowers. Tangerine has flowers of a delicate copper orange when grown on a lime soil in light shade and is well worth a corner.

Given an acid woodland type soil they make densely foliaged evergreen shrubs which deck themselves with racemes of lily-of-the-valley flowers in early spring. In some species the flowers are insignificant compared to the brilliant colouring of the young growth. The young growths open scarlet, change to pink, then pale cream before eventually acquiring the more sombre green.

What can anyone who grows cherries do but wax lyrical about the mounds of blossom which erupt from every branch under the benign May sun. Brief the beauty may be, but the picture remains fresh in the mind long after the last petal falls_ A deep free-draining loam is the best possible medium which can be used.

Prunus communis (amygdalus), the Almond, is cosmopolitan, growing as well in the town garden as it does in the cottage yard, though in the North it rarely achieves a good shape. P. c. pollardii has flowers of a stronger pink than the species. I grow P. x hillieri Spire in front of a 30-ft. high yew. The cherry is now 15 ft. high but still only 3 ft. across so fiercely upright are the branches but the flowers are only sparse. P. sargentii is beautiful in pink flower, but superb when the foliage turns scarlet in autumn. It is amongst the first to don livery in October – a tall tree at 40 ft.

The erect panicles of flowers displayed by taiwanensis are more impressive than those of japonica. This is a race of shrubs which needs no pruning, indeed little attention, apart from a mulch of well-rotted manure or peat, and yet they will increase in beauty with each passing year.