Use the diminutive, bright yellow daffodil 'Tête-à-tête’ among warm, green ferns, glossy green ivies and a taller skimmia (such as 'Kew Green’) or the fragrant Sarcococca confusa. Add a ''firework’’ plant for a dramatic silhouette – perhaps the spiky green and golden Carex oshimensis 'Evergold’. Yellows can also be sharpened by adding blue and purple in the form of smaller-flowered pansies or muscari.
Orange violas almost smoulder against smoke-brown carex; stud a few small purple crocus like 'Tricolor’ among them. Or go for pristine whites – muscari, crocus or Christmas roses – arranged with green and white ivies, with perhaps a pansy or two. Punctuate pink heathers with frosty-leaved lamiums, pulmonarias and spring-flowering cyclamen.
Primroses in rainbow colours abound and pillar-box reds will lift evergreen foliage. Use pale pink forms to shimmer against heucheras with red-veined silver or plummy leaves.
