As storms continue to batter gardens, head indoors and get ready
Now is the time to prepare for spring... it is coming, says our expert Agnes Stevenson, so get planting those pots and prepare the plants for the elements
March is finally here and hopefully it will bring with it some better gardening weather – but I’m not holding my breath. Instead, I’m going to press on with all those tasks I can do under cover, such as sowing seeds and cleaning pots.
Top of the list is to pot up two dozen tiny hellebores so that they can grow on into sturdy plants, ready to plant out into the border below the house.They’ll join the existing hellebores that I’m hoping will eventually carpet this area in early spring, covering the ground in beautiful flowers while I wait for the camellias to open.
I like to plant the hellebores in colour groups and the nursery had packed them using a code which told me which plant was which. Except that I had taken them all out of the containers they’d arrived in before I remembered to check this, and so I’ll now have to wait until they flower before I know what to plant where.
At least now there is some extra light in the early mornings and in the late afternoons so that once the storm systems that have tormented us for weeks have definitely passed over, there will be more time for gardening.
The lengthening days provide reassurance that spring is just around the corner, but I’ve not given up yet of finding ways to brighten up the garden during the darkest part of the year. So I’ve just bought a winter-flowering rhododendron called ‘Christmas Cheer’, which I’m going to plant outside the kitchen window where it should start flowering in late December and continue for several months.
When adding anything new to the garden it’s easy to forget that they will eventually grow and expand, sometimes into very large plants.
I have a prostrate cotoneaster that has just been given a severe haircut. At the time it was planted it was probably a bit of a tiddler, but now it needs space to sprawl so I’m going to have to dig it up and move it to another part of the garden.
We have a laurel hedge that could rival the Great Wall of China for size, but once it was probably no more than a line of skinny whips, and the only reason that the rhododendrons at the top of the slope haven’t blocked out our view of the sky is because I cut them back hard every time they have finished flowering.
Some plants, such as box and Lonicera nitida, lend themselves to frequent pruning, but there are others which lose their natural beauty when interfered with, so it’s always best to check the label for eventual height and spread.