What Flowers Are in Season in April in the UK?

Short answer: April is the widest British month so far. Tulips are at their outdoor peak, ranunculus and anemones are at their best, blossom and lilac arrive, and alliums, fritillaria, wallflowers and the first sweet peas appear. Daffodils are finishing in the south and still going in Scotland. Peonies are not here yet, whatever the photographs suggest.

March is the month the British season becomes broad. April is the month it becomes generous: longer stems, more scent, and the first flowers that look like summer rather than like early spring. It is also the month with the most misleading expectations, because the garden outside is ahead of what any British grower can cut and sell.

What is actually in season in the UK in April?

Outdoor British tulips at their peak, ranunculus, anemones, hyacinths finishing, muscari, fritillaria, late narcissi, wallflowers, forget-me-nots, euphorbia, the first alliums, guelder rose, viburnum, and blossom of every kind — cherry, apple, magnolia, and lilac towards the end of the month. Sweet peas begin under glass and reach volume in May.

The one that surprises people: April is the last full month of the bulb crop. By early May the British flower year has switched over to a completely different set of plants, and the tulips and narcissi that have carried the season since January are gone until next winter.

Is April the best month for British tulips?

For outdoor-grown British tulips, yes. The forced crop that runs from January is glasshouse work; April is when field-grown tulips are cut, and they arrive with thicker stems, stronger colour and better vase life than anything from the winter.

Two practical notes worth having. Tulips continue to grow in the vase, sometimes by several centimetres, so arrange them a little shorter than you want them to end up. And they follow the light, which means a bunch on a windowsill will lean within a day and can be straightened by wrapping it in paper and standing it in deep water for an hour. What is available at any given moment is in tulips.

When do ranunculus, anemones and blossom peak?

Ranunculus peak now, and April is the month to buy them if you buy them once a year. They open in layers over the best part of a week, they last longer than they look as though they should, and the British and Italian crops overlap so the choice of colour is at its widest.

Anemones are also at their best and behave in the opposite way: they open and close with the light, they move noticeably in a vase, and they last a shorter time. Blossom is at its peak too — cut in bud, opened indoors, and finished within a week. If you want April to look like April, that is the combination.

Can you buy British bluebells?

Not as wild-picked cut flowers, and this is worth stating plainly because people ask every spring. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 it is an offence to uproot any wild plant without the landowner's permission, and the native bluebell has extra protection on top of that: trading in wild-collected bluebell bulbs or plants is illegal.

What is legitimately sold is cultivated stock, usually as potted bulbs rather than cut stems, and it is often the Spanish bluebell or a hybrid rather than the native. The honest answer to "can you send me a bunch of bluebells" is that a British bluebell wood is a place to walk in, not a bouquet to order, and the closest thing in a vase is muscari or fritillaria.

When do peonies and sweet peas actually start?

Peonies: imported stems from Israel and Italy begin around the end of April and build through May, and British peonies run from roughly the end of May to early July. If you are ordering peonies in early April, they are coming a long way and they are expensive for that reason. Three weeks of patience changes both the price and the quality — see peonies.

Sweet peas: glasshouse stems appear in April, British field-grown sweet peas from about the end of May through the summer. They are the shortest-lived scented flower we sell and the most worth it, and April is too early to judge them.

What is flown in during April?

The constant list — roses from Kenya, Ethiopia, Ecuador and Colombia, lisianthus, alstroemeria, gerbera, lilies, chrysanthemums and orchids, mostly through the Netherlands — plus Dutch and Italian ranunculus, anemones and blossom that overlap with the British ones, and the first peonies at the very end of the month.

Lily of the valley is worth a line of its own: it peaks around the 1st of May, it is largely a Dutch forced crop rather than a British one, it is expensive for its size, and it lasts a few days. It is bought for a date, not for a fortnight. Roses, which do not care what month it is, are in roses.

Which April flowers last longest?

Ranunculus, alstroemeria, chrysanthemums and carnations, in roughly that order of interest. Potted bulbs and spring plants still outlast everything cut, and in April they can go straight out into a pot or a garden afterwards — those are in plants.

Shortest-lived: open blossom, lilac, which drinks badly unless the woody stem is split, anemones, and lily of the valley. April is also the month when a warm flat starts doing more damage than a cold one: the heating goes off, the sun comes through the window, and a vase in direct April sun is hotter than the same spot in January. The figures in how long flowers last assume a cool room out of direct light.

When should you order in April, and what about Easter and weddings?

Easter has no fixed date — it moves with the lunar calendar and can fall anywhere between the 22nd of March and the 25th of April, so in some years it sits in the middle of this month and in others it is over before April starts. In 2027 it is the 28th of March, which makes that April an unusually quiet one. The range, whenever it lands, is in Easter flowers.

April is also when summer wedding orders are finalised, and the seasonal argument matters more here than anywhere else: a wedding in June can have British peonies and sweet peas that a wedding in April cannot, and knowing that in April saves a difficult conversation in May — see wedding flowers. For ordinary April orders there is no scarcity: we deliver across London seven days a week and take orders until 22:00 for the following day. For the month just gone, see what is in season in March. The handover month is what is in season in May.