APRIL can be a tricky month in the garden, what with the traditional showers as well as extremes of frost and snow, or sunshine and summer temperatures.

I have my birthday this month and have celebrated the day wrapped against snow one year and in vest and shorts enjoying 70 degrees another.

All this adds to the variety of life, but does make spring gardening a challenge. While a warm spell may tempt the unwary gardener into beginning to put dubiously hardy plants outside, it really is not a good idea. Leave all the bedding until the end of May, even if an Easter visit to the garden centre puts thoughts of summer in mind, unless there is a nice warm greenhouse to keep them in.

It is true that half-hardy plants may well survive if they are planted out this month, but they will be set back by extremes of temperature and could struggle to thrive when they should be at their best in the summer.

There is plenty to do in the garden before it is time to plant out bedding, and a spring clean will expose all sorts of growth and colour in the beds and borders.

Collecting remaining autumn leaves that seem to hang about for ages, especially in the nooks and crannies against walls and fences, as well as bits of twigs and other debris, will make the garden look ten times better.

With last year's dead stems and seed heads removed from perennials and buddlejas cut back, an hour's work can transform a tatty patch into a neat area beginning to fill with new growth and ready for the months to come.

Getting down to soil level at this time of year reveals a great amount of growth that is going on in a garden which, at a glance, still looks rather bare.

Lots of herbaceous perennials are pushing shoots through the soil, as are grasses, even though stems left in situ for winter colour may hide them. It is a good idea to get rid of these old grass stems before the new ones make it too difficult to get to them.

One plant that is in its full glory in spring is a hardy geranium appropriately called Geranium x oxonianum 'Spring Fling'.

This is not a popular plant and I have rarely seen it on sale (I got mine from Stillingfleet Lodge Nurseries). Perhaps this is because after its initial burst of colour, the leaves fade and the flowers are insignificant, but the clump of colour in March and April is lovely.

Low growing, it is best put towards the front of a bed where the green and pinkish-cream leaves can be easily seen.

Each leaf is marked with small dots of deep pink that can be highlighted by planting similar coloured plants nearby, such as the double daisy Bellis perennis, a hardy biennial popularly used for spring bedding, nearby. This grouping of plants gives a different tone to the yellows and blues that often dominate a spring garden.