Give your mum flowers for months with our unbeatable selection of garden plants. From early-blooming shrubs to stunning cut flowers and low-maintenance, wildlife-friendly plants, we have something for everyone this Mother's Day.
Mother's Day flowers may be the traditional gift, but they don't last long. Instead of giving your mum a bouquet that will be drooping within days and dead in a few weeks, give her a plant she can pick flowers from year after year.
It can be hard choosing the right plant for a Mother's Day gift, especially if you're not green-fingered yourself. I've put together a selection of my favourite garden plants for you to choose from – there's something for everyone, from keen gardeners to busy working mums who would love a flower-filled garden but don't have the time to look after fussy plants. We also have a great selection of house plants if your mum doesn't have a garden or space for new outdoor plants.
Choose to get your Mother's Day plants delivered to you or directly to your mum. We offer free delivery over £50 and an express next-day delivery service if you've left things a little late (it happens to the best of us).
Best plants for Mother's Day flowers
March is early in the year for most cut flowers, and the Mother's Day flowers you buy in shops are mostly imported from overseas. For a more sustainable Mother's Day gift, buy a garden plant that flowers in March and let your mum pick her own Mother's Day bouquet every year.
Camellias are the roses of the March garden, with showy flowers that bloom in late winter and early spring. The flowers have short stems, so display them in a small vase or jam jar, or for a more striking display, float individual blooms in a water glass or pretty teacup. Camellia 'Bonomiana' flowers from February to April, so by Mother's Day, you'll have an abundance of decorative pink double blooms to pick.
Japanese quinces bloom early, and the cup-shaped flowers are more robust than the blossoms of other fruit trees. Chaenomeles 'Pink Lady' has vibrant coral-pink blooms that add a burst of colour to any garden. Cut stems just as the buds begin to open, and they'll last up to two weeks in a vase indoors.
March is a prime month for hellebores. They look lovely in the garden, but it's often hard to admire the flowers properly due to their down-turned heads. Helleborus 'Winter Moonbeam' has outward-facing white flowers that become tinged with pink as they age. Enjoy them in the garden or place them in a vase on a shelf to admire the blooms at eye-level.
Fragrant Mother's Day plants
Skip the perfume and gift your mum scented flowers. There are several beautiful shrubs that produce wonderfully scented flowers at this time of year, as well as adding year-round structure to a garden. Plant them next to a seating area, path or entrance, so she can enjoy their fragrance every time she walks past.
Clematis armandii is a vigorous evergreen climber with elegant star-shaped flowers that bloom in March and April, adding a wonderful vanilla and almond scent to the air. After the flowers have faded, the glossy green leaves provide background colour for the rest of the year. Train it up a fence or trellis or over an archway – it's a fast-growing plant, making it a great option for disguising unsightly fences or walls.
Daphnes are renowned for their intense perfumed scent. Daphne 'Perfume Princess' blooms for longer than most cultivars from January through to the end of March. Clusters of deep pink flowers fade to pale pink, then white, all the while giving off a sweet, heady fragrance. Cut the stems and bring them inside to add a fresh flower scent to your home.
Viburnum 'Dawn' is a brilliant multi-season shrub that really earns its place in the garden. The deciduous leaves start off bronze, then mature to a rich green before turning dark red in the autumn. However, it's during the winter when this deciduous tree really shines, with masses of honey-scented small pink flowers lasting from November through to the end of March.
Plants for showy cut flowers
For keen gardeners, a new addition to the cut flower garden will always be a winning gift. March is the perfect time to get dahlias off to a head start for summer and autumn flowers. Spring is also a good time to plant peonies and delphiniums. These plants may need a bit more care and attention than flowering shrubs, but the pay-off is big, with show-stopping blooms that look spectacular in the garden or a large vase.
Dahlias come in an overwhelming range of shapes, sizes and colours, but Dahlia 'Wine-Eyed Jill' is one of the prettiest, with gorgeous pink-tipped creamy apricot-coloured petals. Each flowerhead has a deep pink centre, hence the "wine-eyed" name. It's the perfect flower for a woman who loves striking blooms with soft, pastel tones.
A bare-root peony may look less glamorous than a bunch of roses, but it's a long-term investment that will give your mother decades of flowers, with more blooms each year. Paeonia 'Sarah Bernhardt' has huge, fragrant double flowers with ruffled pink petals that give the flowers an airy, fluffy appearance. It blooms in June and July and is a wonderful addition to a sunny romantic border.
Delphiniums make impressive cut flowers with their dramatic spikes of colourful flowers. Delphinium 'Highlander Moonlight' has dusky pink double flowers with layers of frilled petals clustered around cream centres. It's a hardy, disease-resistant cultivar that will thrive in a sunny border.
Romantic plants for an English cottage garden
With its fairytale charm, colourful borders and slightly chaotic look, the English cottage garden is a much-loved, timeless style. It's easy to create a cottage garden feel in any size of garden, and if you choose the right combination of shrubs and perennials, it can be surprisingly low maintenance. These quintessential cottage garden plants add style and impact to borders and seating areas.
You can always find space for one more rose in a cottage garden. In addition to their beautiful, fragrant flowers and colourful hips, roses also add structure and height to borders. Aptly named for Mother's Day, Rosa 'Mum in a Million' is a versatile, hardy rose with large, fragrant pink flowers. It has a long blooming period, so your mum can enjoy vases of freshly cut roses throughout the summer months – all for less than the price of a single bouquet.
Wisteria 'Blue' adds a romantic touch to gardens of all sizes. Wisterias may be best known for covering grand country houses or walled gardens with their iconic racemes of flowers, but they can also transform a small courtyard garden or patio into a secluded retreat. You do need a structure for the wisteria to climb up and be prepared to prune it twice a year, but these spectacular flowering shrubs are much easier to grow than many people think.
Hydrangeas are another wonderfully versatile shrub, which look beautiful in every month of the year. Hydrangea 'Annabelle' is a popular classic, with huge snowball-like flowerheads that reliably bloom from June through to the first frost. The decorative dried flowerheads add winter interest to borders and are a lovely addition to a dried flower vase.
Low-maintenance plants that thrive on neglect
Many mothers would love a beautiful garden but don't have the time or inclination to keep on top of regular watering or fussy plants. Fortunately, there are plenty of plants that prefer being left alone to do their thing and are hard to kill. Many of these are also drought tolerant and beneficial for pollinators – a winning combination.
Geranium 'Ballerina' has striking pale pink flowers with deep purple veins that bloom from late spring all the way through to autumn. Perfectly at home in a cottage garden border, a rockery or a pot, it will thrive in sun or partial shade and it's remarkably tolerant of different soil types.
Sedums are hardy, drought-tolerant perennials that require little to no attention once established, as long as they're planted in a sunny spot. Sedum 'Herbstfreude' develops clusters of green-pink flower buds in mid-summer which mature into flat, raspberry-pink flowerheads. There's no need to deadhead the flowers; it's better for wildlife to leave them on through the winter.
Viburnum 'Lisarose' is a hard-working shrub that's perfect for low-maintenance gardens. Evergreen foliage adds year-round colour and structure, but this plant really shines during the winter months, with bright pink buds that bloom into delicate pink and white flowers. Evergreen viburnums are unfussy about soil type and will thrive in sun or partial shade.
Other Mother's Day gardening gifts
It can be hard choosing the right plant for a Mother's Day gift, particularly if your mum is a keen gardener and you're less green-fingered. If you're not sure which plant will be a hit, play it safe and get your mum a Gardeners Dream gift card.
You can't go wrong with a new pair of gardening gloves. I get through at least a couple of pairs a year as they're always disappearing! Our comfy gardening gloves are super breathable, water resistant and come in a range of colours.
We have a full range of gardening tools, from spades and forks to bonsai tools. March is a perfect time for planting seeds – pair a planting and labelling set with some packets of flower seeds or vegetable seeds for a gift she can grow herself.
