Anyone else planning on some gardening time?... What can I plant now that will quickly look pretty?

[Dreamsofasundayroast]

I'm hoping to get busy in my much neglected garden and the DC are keen to help. They have asked can we plant some pretty colourful flowers. What can we plant that will come up fairly soon?
Assume I'll need to order seeds/bulbs online.

I could Google but thought it'd be nicer to ask MN gardeners.

I'm not much of a gardener but DH is very keen I'll ask him when he's awake.

With children what about sunflowers? Cress for a quick one? - get the children to decorate a pot so it looks like a face first .

We're planting up pots of herbs - grow quickly, DS can measure, draw, taste and put in cooking as part of my home ed effort.

In the garden I'm thinking sunflowers, sweet peas and some easy veggies, but we'll have to do some clearing and digging over first.

For online plants my mum used to use Thompson and Morgan I think.

It's a bit soon for outside, if you notice the weeds are starting to grow, so the soil IS starting to warm up but it isn't warm enough for veg, imv.
But you could start things off on a sunny windowsill.

I think b&q have 20% off plants at the moment.

I’m just about to go out and dig two flower beds and use the turf to returf some areas of the lawn. But it’s just started raining so am waiting 5 minutes.

Now’s the perfect time to plant summer flowering bulbs, I’ve just ordered some online. But if you want fruit and veg from seed I’d start them indoors. The only issue is space!

Not colourful, or in the garden yet tbh, but I am growing some loofah seeds.

Grow your own Loofahs... who knew?!

You can plant broad beans outside now. They're quick and tasty.

Wait a month for other things, I'd say. Or start sweet peas on the windowsill inside.

Can I suggest that you get them to grow some vegetable? You can get purple and yellow beans that grow up wigwams, rainbow chard, crimson flowering broad beans and when I feel better I can probably think of more. Oh yes, yellow courgettes and there are colourful beetroot and carrots. Perpetual spinach good for shade. You can get purple mange tout. As said bit early yet but good time to get ready

If you don’t need it yourself others will this year . For flowers Cosmos keeps going well, dahlias respond well to being picked so be nice for them to bring in the house. Cornflowers nice and easy as is Nigella.

We are (paranoid) planting lots of edible veg plants.

I had already ordered the easiest things I could think of for kids - peas, chard and herbs. Wild strawberries and potatoes.

Thanks for all the replies. Lots of ideas. I think DC will love some of these. Going to order some stuff, definitely cress seeds.
DC had asked about growing vegetables. I assume that requires a fair bit of effort though in terms of preparing the soil?

Dreamsofasundayroast
You can buy some cheap grow bags for tomatoes / salads and/ or empty them to dig into the soil to improve it. Quick wins are runner beans grown up a fence, french beans( smaller) courgettes (let them grow and you have marrows) salad leaves / lettuce. I'm just holding off planting most of my seeds as last year I planted some out too early and the frost killed them! BUT, today I'm going to start off some sweet peas on a window ledge.
I've also bought a pack of candytuft - you just scatter them in the soil and get pretty little pink/ white flowers.

OP - there's also this board where a lot of experienced gardeners hang out - some of the older threads are really informative:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/gardening