Constant gardeners
ALL over the country certain people will be heaving a great sigh of relief as they shove their gardening tools in the shed one last time and bang the door shut.
British Summer Time officially ended last weekend and for some folk that spells the close of the gardening season.
But not everyone is so pleased. Keen gardeners often feel bereft at the thought of those wintry months with nothing for green fingers to do. By February some of them are almost crawling up the walls.
But the good news is winter is a great time for catching up on all those things you simply can’t fit into the summer schedule because regular mowing, clipping, trimming and weeding take up all your time. Now that everything has stopped growing, there’s a chance to spend time on more contemplative, forwardlooking projects.
If some parts of the garden are ripe for a mini-makeover, the quiet months ahead give you plenty of time for a redesign. The planning can be done indoors when the weather’s too bad for anything else, then in mild spells you can get on with digging out foundations, laying paving and doing any brickwork (concrete sets best when the weather is cool – but don’t do it when a very wet or freezing spell is likely).
There’s also time to assemble sheds, flat-pack arches or gazebos, put up fencing or trellises, dig a pond or make raised beds for growing vegetables.
Winter is also ideal for soil preparation. If you are creating a new lawn, kitchen garden or flower bed, there is plenty of time to get the ground cleared and dug over.
You can also push ahead with planting. The dormant season, from now until mid-March, is the best time for planting deciduous trees, shrubs, roses and hedges. Indeed, it’s the only time you can plant bare-root plants dug up from a nursery field.
Even pot-grown shrubs from garden centres “take” so much better if they are put in when they aren’t in leaf.
What’s more, you can often make big savings by planting now as garden centres often hold endof-season sales to clear the decks in time for Christmas. There are also lots of useful little jobs to fill odd moments such as sorting out the shed and cleaning pots and seed trays ready for spring.
When the weather is inclement you can spend time indoors profitably by ordering seeds and plants. Or, outside, prepare for wintry weather by lagging any exposed taps and pipes, replacing cracked panes of glass in the greenhouse and securing tree ties.
Dull? Well, maybe but boy will you feel virtuous when these jobs are completed.
If you want something creative to do, collect plants that do their stuff in winter.
You might dabble in named varieties of snowdrops in pots, unusual winter-flowering conservatory plants such as lachenalia and correa, or exotic houseplants.
Down the garden there are various winter-flowering shrubs to enjoy and seasonal containers to plant up.
So there’s no excuse for feeling bored, fed up or housebound. The winter break is a great opportunity to do the sort of gardening you can’t do the rest of the year. Make the most of it. It’ll soon be back to business as usual.
WINTER MAY BE ON THE WAY, BUT
THERE’S STILL PLENTY YOU CAN BE GETTING ON WITH IN THE GARDEN TO
FILL THE TIME BETWEEN NOW AND SPRING