One of my favourite gardening anecdotes is all about a poppy called Perry's White. It was bred in the early years of the 20th century by Amos Perry, a famous Edwardian nursery owner from Winchmore Hill, Middlesex. Perry used a mixture of five annual and perennial species to improve the bright-orange poppies then available. One of his best is the peach-pink Mrs Perry, bred in 1903.

Perry was always desperate to breed a pure-white oriental poppy but it eluded him. One day he had an irate letter from a lady customer complaining that one of her Mrs Perry plants had produced ugly white flowers.

Correspondence flew between Perry and his customer for some days before Amos Perry reluctantly agreed to visit his dissatisfied customer. Once there, he spotted his longed-for white poppy. He hastily removed it and Perry's White was finally launched at the Chelsea Flower Show in 1912 to great acclaim.

In subsequent years there have been many more orientals in a whole range of colours. One of the best is Patty's Plum and this mauve-plum poppy has an equally bizarre history. It was rescued from Mrs Patricia Marrow's compost heap (circa 1995) by Sandra Pope, who gardens at Hadspen House, Somerset. It caused a sensation at the 1999 Chelsea Flower Show. Livermore Beauty is another fine poppy, an upright deep-red and black, and Raspberry Queen is an excellent Barbara Cartland pink.

All these orientals have very showy May flowers and, although they are fleeting, lasting on average a mere ten days, they make a real impact on the May garden.

But they leave gardeners with a problem because, once they've flowered, they leave a maddening gap in the border. It's vital to cover this space with later-flowering plants, whether it's dahlias, nicotianas, penstemons, zinnias or rudbeckias. The poppy leaves do return by late autumn and then persist through winter.

All poppies produce lots of seeds and these are viable for at least 40 years, but they only germinate in light conditions. This is why poppies appeared when the trenches were dug in the First World War and this is why we often see them in newly ploughed fields or when roadworks disturb the soil.

It's best to fill a three-inch pot and place a tiny pinch of seed on the surface of the compost. Once germinated, plant the whole pot into the garden.

Or you can sprinkle the seeds straight onto the soil. Good annual forms include the Ladybird Poppy (Papaver commutatum ) and the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum).

The shrubby Californian Poppy (Romneya coulteri) produces white flowers with crepe-paper petals set round a double boss of golden stamens in late summer. If it likes you it roams and has been known to cross paths and pop up 20 feet away. Not a plant for the too-tidy gardener!

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