The East Yorkshire-based grower – one of Europe's largest – has battled the recent snow and icy conditions to guarantee a supply of colourful spring blooms for its wholesale customers, which include household names such as Sainsbury's. A selection of the plants will be available to local customers at the company's Outlet Garden Centre at Woodmansey, near Beverley.

Among the 4,242,604 flowering bulbs produced are traditional spring favourites, such as alliums, anemones, blue bells, crocuses, daffodils, snowdrops and hyacinths. The bulbs are carefully selected from specialist suppliers in Holland, France and the UK. They are planted in pots and containers, and then carefully nurtured to ensure that the plant is just emerging from the bulb by the time customers receive them. This gives people the option of keeping them in the pot, either indoors or outside, or planting them out in the garden.

Each of the 3,094,636 primroses is sown from seed, and Coletta and Tyson has built up a stunning variety of colours over the years by working with Europe's finest plant breeders.

John Tyson, production director, explained: "Most gardens will be looking pretty bleak at this time of year as many plants are dormant and there is little or no colour. Through the darkest and coldest days of winter, our growing operation is in full swing to ensure that customers can buy their spring bulbs and primroses in the coming weeks. People who enjoy gardening tend to look forward to bringing a touch of cheery, spring colour to their homes and gardens after the dark and dreary winter months, and it's our job to make that happen!

"Although we have the very latest technology at our fingertips to control the amount of heat, light and water the young plants and bulbs get, we've had to take extra special care of the plants during the recent extreme weather conditions to ensure that it didn't interfere with their progress in any way."