Spring tidy up

Practical tips for keeping your garden looking good through spring

Mid spring in the garden is all about flowers, fragrance and growth, but look a little closer. Among all the beauty are flowers that are past their best. There are also overgrown hedges, daggy bulbs and bits of frost-damaged growth that want to reshoot. Regular pruning and clipping takes little time but makes a world of difference to how long and how well plants grow. Make these clever cuts to keep things in full bloom at your place. For more spring jobs, turn to page 66.

deadhead for more owers

Deadheading is a type of pruning that’s done while plants are in flower. Regularly cutting off the dead flowers has several benefits: it keeps plants looking good, stops the plant forming seeds, and acts as tip-pruning, encouraging new growth and more flowers. Cut the flower stem below the old flower and just above a spot where new growth will appear. For shrubs or small flowering plants that mass themselves in blooms, shear over the plant when most of the flowers are spent.

Take the secateurs to roses, daisies, japonica camellia, viburnum (Viburnum tinus), spring- owering natives, bulbs and annuals. Don’t deadhead owers that you want to form fruit or seeds (such as fruiting plants).

trim hedges

Hedges may be looking a bit scruffy after a rush of new growth. Once the growth hardens off, it’s safe to prune. If the hedge is a flowering hedge such as an azalea, wait until flowering is over before pruning. Use a hedge pruner, shears or secateurs to shape hedges. Before starting, however, there’s a very important check to be done. Have a good look into the hedge to make sure there are no nesting birds in residence. If there are birds nesting, wait until the young have fledged and flown away before pruning.

Hedge plants to prune in mid to late spring include pittosporum, bottlebrush, box (Japanese and European), viburnum, conifers, photinia, azalea, Italian lavender, camellia and westringia.

care for spent bulbs

The early spring bulbs have finished flowering in all but the coldest climates. Looking after them now needs a two-pronged approach. Spend a satisfying time in the garden cutting off the spent flowers near the base of the stem (a type of deadheading) but don’t touch the foliage. Follow this with a feed of fertiliser, to feed the growth that is still green and ensure plump, healthy bulbs form beneath the soil. Allow the bulb’s leaves to die back for as long as you can tolerate their untidiness. Gardeners sometimes plait up lanky bulb leaves to tidy the garden. While this makes everything look neat, it limits the photosynthesis process.

Cut o spent da odil and other narcissus owers, along with those on tulip, hyacinth, bluebell, freesia, anemone and ranunculus. Once lanky bulb foliage has gone brown, cut or twist it o (without pulling up the bulbs!).