Hanging baskets and window boxes are blooming with flowers such as lobelia, geranium, and 'busy lizzie', and watered daily by their proud owners.
On the slopes of Snowdonia there's a more natural display of thistle and bracken encroaching on farm pasture and, in amongst it, millions of giant busy lizzies or Himalayan balsam.
Victorian collectors introduced it to our gardens but the plant, and especially its exploding seed pod, is no respecter of boundaries. One touch of the pod in late summer and the seeds are propelled up to 20 feet.
Each year it gains a stronger stranglehold crowding out our native species, most often on the banks of rivers and streams. At the first frost it crumples into a mush, eventually leaving a bare bank, with no roots to protect against erosion.
It's not a problem in India where its spread is contained by bugs and pathogens that we don't have. Not to mention a population that harvests and cooks the seeds into a curry.
Chemical controls are available to our farmers, but these are not always viable near to watercourses or when the terrain is too rugged for a tractor. This is where a team of Snowdonia Society volunteers can comes in handy.
We met at a farm outside Capel Curig in sight of cloud-topped Snowdon and the Glyderau. The equipment was basic: gloves to protect against nettles, bags for the balsam and a high visibility orange tabard - I'm not quite sure what this was for.
The instructions were straightforward, just pull it up and fill the bags for the farmer to collect and burn.
My allotted section was up the hill along a small stream and stone wall, removing as much as possible. True to the description it was really easy to pull out, with skimpy little roots no more than a couple of inches long.
In the relatively open ground at the start of the wall I made good progress, the only hazard being tall nettles that made me regret choosing a short-sleeved shirt.
As I moved upwards I reached a zone of dense bracken with flowering balsam poking through the canopy. I waded in and evicted the intruder only to find hundreds of other young plants just waiting to emerge - a conspiracy with bracken and balsam working in tandem. There was nothing for it other than to uproot the lot, bracken and all.
By the end of the day we were half way up this steep field and there was a stack of bulging black bags by the track. I dread to think how much more remains to be tackled across Snowdonia.
But maybe the most significant gain was the conversion of a couple of people who will weed it out wherever they see it.
The plants are most visible in summer, a metre or two tall, with distinctive plumes of pinkish-white flowers, herringbone leaves and a fleshy, pea-shooter type of stem. Each plant plucked now will save about 800 seeds being released!
Alongside the stream in my garden there are several forests of balsam that, for many years, have been releasing their seeds to float into the nature reserve below. But that won't be happening this summer.
Huw Jenkins
