The bad news is that most of you are feeling half a stone heavier and a lot poorer. The good news is that the days are getting longer, leaving you enough time to browse through seed catalogues. So propel yourself into next summer and pick out some hardy annuals.

These last for one year only so they have to germinate speedily once spring arrives. As a result almost every hardy annual is easy-peasy if sown in late March or April. Some, like calendulas, are so simple you can scatter the large seeds on the ground and rake them in. Clary (Salvia horminium), Larkspur (Consolida ambigua) and tagetes can also be sown direct. The trick is to save the seeds every year so that you have plenty to sprinkle.

Others are best sown thinly in seed trays and transplanted in small clumps – especially as seeds are so expensive in this country. Annual poppies can be grown like this using modular seed trays. Put the tiniest pinch in each module and plant out the rooted seedlings when very young. Poppies are tap-rooted plants that will need moving early. Ladybird poppies (Papaver commutatum), cosmos, blue cornflower and amaranthus (Love-lies bleeding) can all be grown like this.

Annuals have flowers designed to attract a pollinator – whether it’s a bee, hoverfly, wasp, moth or flea beetle. As a result, most produce a lot of nectar so if you grow annuals you will pull in pollinators. This was really noticeable last year on the trial field at RHS Wisley. The annual trial was alive with insect life and you could actually hear the buzzing.

The blue cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) is the favourite plant of the red-tailed bumblebee in my garden. Bumblebees also enjoy clary sage and these efficient creatures have a unique ability to buzz pollinate. They literally shake the pollen down and tomatoes and aubergines (members of the solanum family) can only be pollinated in this way.

The white umbellifer (Ammi majus) is a lovely summer addition and the tiny cow-parsley-like flowers are ideal for the tiny mouths of hoverflies. Their larvae are parasitic and eat aphids. They are also are attracted by orange. Calendulas and African marigolds are also highly popular.

The Mexican daisy (Cosmos bipinnatus) comes into its own in late summer and autumn and will carry on until November in clement years. It prefers evenly balanced days. ‘Psyche White’ is a lovely semi-double from Thompson & Morgan. The dubiously named ‘Double Click’ is a mixture of pinks in varying degrees of doubleness.

The selected ‘Rose BonBon (again from T & M) is even fuller. Mr Fothergill has ‘Sweet Kisses’ with ruffled white flowers edged in deep-pink. Cosmos should be sown inside in April and then planted out in May after the fear of frost has passed. By the time autumn arrives they have acquired more hardiness and will shrug off early frost. Like all daisies they need an open position and it’s worth reminding yourself that daisy is a corruption of ‘day’s eye’.