Gardening: Martyn Cox
Use a little elbow grease now to smarten up your beds and you’ll soon reap the rewards with a beautiful seasonal garden
At the end of winter, most beds and borders are in a sad state. Faded seed heads, decaying stems and overgrown perennials make a depressing sight, while shrubs might show signs of frost damage. Any bare patches of soil are likely to be peppered with weed seedlings, waiting to burst into life as temperatures rise.
Fortunately, this sorry scene is largely cosmetic and even the most uncompromising areas can be licked into shape with a bit of elbow grease. Spending a few hours cutting back, pruning, dividing and weeding will make an immediate visual difference, and ensure that plants remain in good health.
Once you’ve smartened up unsightly beds and borders, all they need are a few finishing touches to make certain they are ready for the growing season ahead. Fill any noticeable gaps with new specimens, put supports in place for perennials and mulch the ground.
Start your overhaul with a pair of secateurs. Snip off old flowering stems of perennials left for winter interest, cutting as close to the ground as possible while avoiding any fresh shoots. Tidy up tatty foliage of ferns and evergreen perennials, such as acanthus, epimedium and some kniphofias.
Evergreen grasses don’t really need pruning to keep them in shape, but all deciduous ones are best given some tough treatment in early spring. Gather up the foliage and hold in one hand, and then cut back entire clumps to just above ground level, steering clear of new growth emerging from the crown.
Severe frosts can cause damage to the shoot tips of shrubs. Once deciduous specimens come into leaf, prune back dead growth to a healthy pair of buds – this will prevent dieback spreading down the stem. Tackle evergreen shrubs in April, ensuring that sappy growth stimulated by pruning is not damaged by a late frost.
Over time, many herbaceous perennials will form large clumps that can engulf other plants, outgrow their allotted spot or become reluctant to flower. The good news is that it’s easy to restore their vigour or control spread by using a technique known as division.
Simply dig up a dormant specimen and split into several smaller pieces, making sure each has roots and some healthy shoots. As a crude rule, divide perennials that flower after midsummer’s day now and leave those that bloom before that date until autumn.
Weeds are opportunistic plants and even if you blitzed the soil in autumn, hairy bittercress and groundsel will have germinated. Despatch them quickly by running a Dutch hoe over the soil, severing the tops from the roots — do this on a sunny day and leave their remains to wither on the surface.
Sorting out untidy beds and borders will often reveal gaps, so plug any noticeable spots with fresh specimens.
Apart from causing less disturbance to neighbouring plants, setting anything in the ground in early spring will ensure they establish quickly and go on to earn their keep this season.
Trees, shrubs, perennials and most climbers are best set in holes that are the same depth as the rootball but three times as wide. Before returning soil to the hole, improve with garden compost and break down large lumps.
A fabulous show of summer colour will come to a premature end if perennials are buffeted by wind or rain, or buckle under the weight of their flowers. To prevent this happening, shore them up with canes, pea sticks or purposebuilt plant support stakes.
It might sound like odd advice when perennials have barely started to grow, but now is the perfect time. New shoots will grow rapidly and disguise supports within months, while those added later tend to stand out like a sore thumb. It’s also harder to support older plants without damaging growth.
Finish off by mulching beds with composted bark or compost. The material sets off plants perfectly, locks in moisture and hinders weeds. Spread a 3in layer over the surface but leave a gap around stems as it can soften bark, leaving plants vulnerable to diseases.