With all those recent wet winter months, it seems a strange thing to be recommending adding water to your garden! However, it looks as if we are in for quite a dry spell in the critical growing months of April and May. This is the time when plants need to be drawing on moisture to enable them to produce energy to grow.
A new tree or shrub will suffer if they are trying to establish themselves in their first growing season away from the cosseted environment of a plant nursery where they will have been regularly drip-fed water and nutrients. You don’t need to go overboard – half a watering can a week for a shrub and a full one for a tree should do the trick.
With the brighter days now upon us, there is plenty to get on with:
• Move evergreens: this is the best time of year to move or plant evergreens. Avoid waterlogged or parched soils.
• Divide herbaceous perennials and grasses: Phlox, Hemerocallis and Hosta are all best divided now. Use two forks back to back to split the tougher plants.
• Lawn repairs: now the frosts are receding, seed can be bought online and sown on patches that have become worn. Remember to prepare the ground by scraping off any unwanted weeds or worn grass and giving the area a good rake over. Add a sprinkling of compost and try to keep hungry birds away.
• Prune shrubs after they have flowered: Forsythia and Chaenomeles fall into this category. Hardy Fuchsia can be cut back to healthy buds.
• Pond plants: now is the time to get at the water lilies and marginal plants, to divide them into smaller clumps in order to avoid them choking the life out of a pond.
• Wildlife: if you are in the mood for clearing, cutting and composting, please be aware that this is the time of year when much of the local wildlife will be making their nesting homes. Avoid hedge cutting and be attentive when you are tidying up sheltered corners of the garden. You can help hedgehogs move around from garden to garden by making small gaps at the base of fences.
• Composting and mulching: add compost or well-rotted manure to borders and around the bases of trees and shrubs: this will help keep the moisture in, the weeds off and give a slow release of nutrients. It is a good time to turn your compost heap material too.
• Prune those plants that have been affected by cold winds and the winter such as the Acers or Choisya. Cut back the stems to the healthy growth.
• Cut back to 10 centimetres from the ground those tender plants that are shrub-like in habit but that are actually herbaceous plants. These include Caryopteris, Fuchsia and Penstemon.
• Put in plant supports where needed and canes to mark where vulnerable plants are emerging: by doing this they will not be overlooked when watering and weeding.
• Lower the blade of your lawn mower as the grass becomes more lush and more able to take a finer cut.
• Feed your lawn with a nitrogen rich fertiliser - preferably an organic one.
• Add compost or manure to the base of shrub and standard roses.
• Divide and replant herbaceous plants that have flowered including Brunnera, Pulmonaria and Primula.
• Lift and divide daffodils and other spring flowering bulbs.
• Make sure your pond has ledges and access points for wildlife (such as tadpoles) to get in and out of the water. Clear off any excess pond weed.
Every spring seems to be a miracle, every colour and bright bud heralding good times.
Go on – why not join in?