Wild thing

Diarmuid Gavin’s no-effort gardening tips and tricks

October is probably the best month to prepare your garden for beautiful spring and autumn colour. You begin to see the bones of the garden when the leaves fall, and it’s an excellent time to plant the bulbs for next year.

But perhaps the most important thing that’s happening at the moment is the move towards lazier gardening.

Reducing time spent watering, weeding and digging is all the rage as nature lovers seek alternative ways to garden without chemicals and artificial fertilisers. Instead they’re happy to leave the weeds grow, and are not worrying that the lawn is a bit messy.

We all need to learn to garden with nature as much as possible and lessen our expectations. For years we’ve pumped our gardens – from the soil to the plants – full of stuff that’s no good for them because of our never-ending search for bigger and better.

We’ve somehow developed the feeling that we should know everything about every plant that’s out there, and then are left feeling bad if we don’t.

So my top tip is: just enjoy what you have and embrace the mess.

If there are weeds in the garden they will be producing pollen and nectar which is going to be great for all sorts of things, from the bees and the butterflies to the moths at night.

Take pride in feeding that whole ecosystem; just relax and appreciate what local councils and Dublin’s

Trinity College are doing with the wildflower meadows.

All of those will soon begin to die off at the end of the season and drop seeds for next year. There really is all sorts of magic happening out there.