Best Crocus Garden Buys 2026: The 6 We'd Buy

‘Annabelle’ is the shrub most gardens could find room for: huge creamy-white heads in late summer that fade to lime, in full sun or light shade, and it is fully hardy. The page carries both the RHS Award of Garden Merit roundel and the five-year guarantee stamp. When we checked, the two-litre pot was reduced to £18.05 and a ten-litre plant, 50 to 80cm tall, to £62.99; the cheaper nine-centimetre pots return in spring 2027.

The page is candid about the main weakness: the heads are heavy and young stems struggle to hold them, so plan on supports for the first few years. The low-rated reviews agree. One owner found the big heads flimsy in heavy rain and the plants thirsty; another, who bought for a roof-garden container, found it struggled in a drier spot. A buyer of a nine-centimetre pot said it arrived wilting with dead leaves.

This is the soft, blonde grass that sways in every show garden, and Crocus sells it in more ways than almost anything else on the site: roughly 30 seeds for £3.79, a nine-centimetre pot for £8.99, three for £19.99 or six for £35.99, which brings each plant down to £6. It grows to about 60cm, wants full sun and good drainage, and needs no cutting back, only a comb through with gloved hands in early spring. The page carries the guarantee stamp.

The weak reviews are about patience and position. Several buyers of the small pots found them slow to bulk up in the first year, and two who planted in shade said they barely grew. The page also warns it is semi-evergreen and may lose all its leaves in a cold, exposed garden, and it dislikes prolonged wet.

Few perennials give as much colour for the space. ‘Caradonna’ makes a 60cm mound of grey-green leaves with dark stems and violet flowers, wants full sun, tolerates drought, and the page says it carries nectar for bees and butterflies through a long flowering season. A single nine-centimetre pot is £9.99; six bring it down to £5.83 each, and the two-litre pot was reduced to £12.56 when we checked.

No review on the page goes below three stars, but the three-star ones are useful. A long-time grower says the main flush lasts about six weeks rather than the summer-to-autumn run the description implies, with only a small rebloom if cut back. Buyers of the small pots called them leggy or slow in the first season, and one two-litre plant arrived with a weed growing through its roots.

Star jasmine is the evergreen climber designers reach for on a sunny wall: glossy leaves that bronze in winter and clusters of very fragrant white flowers in mid to late summer. Crocus sells it from a nine-centimetre pot on a short cane (£14.39 when we checked) to a nine-litre plant on a two-metre cane, and suggests planting 30 to 60cm away from the wall.

Read the hardiness line. The page calls it borderline hardy, needing winter protection in colder areas, and it does not carry the five-year guarantee stamp that the other plants here do. The low-rated reviews are about size and speed: two-litre plants smaller than expected, sitting in a bigger pot than their roots filled, one with yellow leaves and root-bound, and several owners waiting a long time for growth or flowers.

Sweet box earns its place in January, when its small white flowers scent a whole path. The page describes it as dense and evergreen, happy in light shade or full shade, coping with dry shade once established, and suggests planting it by a door so the scent is noticed. It runs from a nine-centimetre pot, reduced to £6.99 when we checked, to a 7.5-litre plant 40 to 60cm tall. The berries are ornamental, and the page warns they are not to be eaten.

Its weakness is speed, and the reviews say so plainly. Owners call it slow-growing, one reporting little growth in two years, and a buyer of a 4.5-litre plant found it only about 20cm tall. Another’s box arrived caved in, though the plant survived.

DeWit is a family toolmaker founded in 1898, and this is its small shovel: a pointed 11 x 14cm head on a 25cm ash handle, 45cm long overall, for scooping compost, spreading mulch and planting perennials. The head is joined with a flat forged tang meant to stop it loosening in the socket, and it comes with a lifetime guarantee against manufacturing defects. It was reduced from £34.99 to £27.99 when we checked.

There are two reasons for caution. The page had no customer reviews at all, so there is nothing to go on about how it wears. And the listing contradicts itself on the steel, calling it high-carbon in one paragraph and boron steel in the next. Add it to a plant order, because on its own it still pays the £5.99 delivery charge.