Mothering Sunday: It’s when we get to mother our mothers – spoil them rotten and yes, say a big fat THANK YOU for all the stuff they do for us, past, present and future. It’s quick and easy to do your own posy, and is lovely and charming because you did it yourself (and from a mother’s point of view, getting something home-made by your children is pretty much the zenith of happiness).

You might think there’s nothing to be had in the garden right now, but look carefully and you’ll find treasure. The trick to this is confidence…know that it’s not what you put in your posy, but that you make one. Go round the garden snipping anything and everything that looks sweet and cheerful, along with a few bits of greenery – even herbs will do (most people have rosemary or oregano kicking around). Snip the stems as long as possible, and assemble the posy in your hand, adding each bloom individually until you are happy with it. Tie it with some string, adding more blooms if you feel you need to, and then cut the stems so they’re all the same length before covering the string with some proper silken ribbon in a life-affirming colour.

My posy is made up of daffodils, muscari (Grape hyacinth), leucojum vernum (Spring snowflake) and hellebore, together with some rosemary stems and viburnum tinus to pad it out, three Snake’s head fritillary blooms that I snipped from a pot a plant bought recently at the garden centre (my fritillaries are not even out of the ground yet), and a single stem of erysimum (Wall flower) that has decided to make an early appearance. I put it together completely randomly, without fussing about what went where, and without even thinking about colour. My mother is going to love it.

If you don’t have a garden from which to pilfer a posy, then a tiny little pot of violets or primroses (and you can forage responsibly for these country-wide) is enough to gladden any mother’s heart.

Happy mothers’ day!