Renowned gardener Adam Frost has named his favourite flower to plant in May, one which he says will add value to any garden.

Adam, an experienced and well-known horticulturalist who is a presenter on Gardeners' World, was speaking on the Gardeners’ Corner podcast when he made the remark.

After being asked by the hosts which bulb he would recommend, Adam told them that he recommended a Tulipa sylvestris, a plant otherwise known as the wild tulip or woodland tulip.

Adam, 56, said: “May, for me, obviously it’s Chelsea Flower Show time. One bulb that I really really love is the tulip. I’m going to go for tulip sylvestris which, in reality, naturalised probably 16th/17th century. It’s just an incredible plant. I’ve nicknamed it mucky knees. So you will hear it called a woodland tulip.”

The renowned BBC Gardeners' World expert explained that the reason why he has such a specific nickname for it is because of how it makes him feel and what it has inspired him to do.

He explained: “I call it mucky knees because when you see it growing in the garden and it moves beautifully in the breeze; and then every now and then if you’ve got a reasonably clump you get a whiff of incredible scent.

“And you will find the next thing the plant has taken you to your knees and you are down with your nose amongst the tulips. It’s beautiful, soft yellow….It’ll naturalise it’ll spread by seed, but not heavily so it sort of creates these wonderful swathes.”

However, this wasn’t all as Adam explained that the tulip caused a little situation during his early days on Gardeners’ World, such was the passion it caused in him.

Adam said: “I can remember, not the garden before, the one we just moved in, but the garden before the big one that I first started with Gardener’s World, when I moved in there the first spring I walked into the orchard and there was some in there. I ran back to the house like a little boy and everybody’s looking at me like ‘He’s gone mad, what is he on about?’

“So I then proceeded to drag everybody outside. At that point what I did, because there was a big clump in that orchard, I dug some up.”

Adam later explained that they were a bulb that liked a variety of conditions. He said: “I put some in a little woodland area and during that time that we lived there they started to seed out of the woodland as well which gives you a good idea of the conditions they want.”

They’re happy in sort of grassland, but they’ll drift into a woodland. They’ll take that semi-shade and I love the way you can play with the two different areas.

“In fact they’re a bulb that seems to have travelled the quite well. You’ll find it across Europe, China, central Asia, even up in North America.”

Coverage of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show will begin at 8pm on BBC Two today (May 17), with Adam and Sophie Raworth taking a first look at the iconic event.