There’s a simple secret behind the great gardens – they hook us in via our senses. If you think your garden is a bit ho hum, here are 3 essentials for garden design that will transform your garden into a joyful space full of fragrance, movement and colour.

1. Perfume: Even blindfolded, you should be able to tell that you’re in a garden. You should be able to enjoy the plants growing around you via deep, delicious breaths. Take a few good lungs-full and if you can’t detect a perfumed breeze, better head off to the garden centre. To make your life easier, spend ten minutes doing some internet research to put a list together of perfumed plants like lilac, roses or viburnum. Can’t be bothered doing the research? Then just ask for the queen of all fragrant plants, Daphne Perfume Princess™. Daphne is a small evergreen shrub that covers itself in waxy super-fragrant flowers in late winter and early spring. Daphne Perfume Princess is the extraordinarily well-bred version of a daphne, one that every garden should include because she’s luscious, lovely and easy to grow. Oh, and you’ll be completely astonished at the heady perfume she’ll toss out onto the breezes.

2. Movement: Each time you look out the window at your garden, does everything look like a pic rather than a video? Nothing’s moving? Even when there’s been a wind warning? There are a lot of gardens like this simply because static landscapes are usually low maintenance if also pretty dull. So if you have a space filled with topiary, yuccas and succulents, here’s how to make that cardboard cut-out landscape dance. Plant strappy plants. Grasses, cordylines, agapanthus. Whatever looks good to you is fine as long as it’s flexible enough to wave around in the breeze. Dot them through your landscape and when you next look out the window, you’ll be looking at a garden that’s come to life.

3.Colour: So many gardens are filled with a predictable set of green plants as part of a plan to be safe and inoffensive. Which is fine until you start to feel starved of colour. This is the easiest garden fix of all. Drive to the garden centre and fill your car with whatever takes your fancy. Seedlings will give you instant colour even if they only last a season: pansies, poppies, sunflowers, marigolds and sweet peas. Flowering shrubs will hang in there for the longer term: roses, camellias, bottlebrushes, hibiscus. Or use foliage colour rather than flowers: coleus, bromeliads, cannas (Tropicanna® cannas are the best). Plant your new bright plant friends in wherever there’s room and the original green framework will help bring the look (and the various colours) together.