blooming lovely!

Gardening expert Peter Dowdall shares how to prolong the colour in your garden this summer and protect the garden’s most vulnerable inhabitants

August is the month where you get to enjoy the fruits of the garden. Even though the warmest weather is most likely behind us, the garden is alive with colour, flowers and plants in bloom, and insects and bird life are living their best lives.

KEEP COLOUR ALIVE

To ensure you have colour in your garden for another while it’s important to deadhead your shrubs and feed them with good organic plant feed as they’re finishing their first flush of flower. If you don’t deadhead and feed they’ll just fade away and they’ve done their thing. But if you do, you’re promoting more flowers and more growth.

If you have bedding plants, deadheading just means pinching out the dead flowers to promote new flowers and growth. Keep them well watered and, if necessary, if they’re in pots or containers, keep them well fed with the good organic plant feed. With your flowering perennials you want to be deadheading continuously and consider staking them to keep them upright and stop them from falling over.

Consider a good mulch to keep the terrain moist and keep weeds at bay. Keep them well watered and fed and when they have given their first flush of flowers, cut them back. A lot of flowering perennials will give a second flush as well, it may not be as good as the first one, but you will get more coverage going forward.

free planting

When you’re cutting back delphiniums, for example, to promote a second flush, wait for the seed head to ripen. It’s green after flowering but if you wait for it to turn brown, now it’s ripe for cutting. After you cut off the seed head instead of throwing it out, I shake out the contents onto a newspaper on the kitchen table and I get rid of any of the chaf and anything we don’t want and I put the seeds in an envelope to keep for later in the year or the following year.

You can do that with loads of perennial plants and even your annuals as well by collecting your own seeds for the following year.

Also August and September is a time for taking cuttings from many of our plants. And we can later grow more using those same cuttings. They’re called softwood cuttings, which just means current year’s growth.

LOOK AFTER WILDLIFE

During the summer months, there are an awful lot of new wildlife babies in the garden. Baby birds, baby frogs, and lots of new growth and new life.

And while the garden is a place for us to enjoy, yes, it’s also a home to all these wildlife. So, as curators of our open space, we need to protect that tapestry and do our best to protect them. Most people want to do this anyway and don’t want to do damage if they’re aware of what they shouldn’t be doing.

Things like bird’s nests are actually covered under the Wildlife Act which says that you’re not allowed to cut your hedges during the summer months from March to September.

Small trees and hedges are where birds will nest. I would encourage everyone not to, but if you did have to do any trimming for any reason during this time, please do check to make sure there are no birds nesting before you do.

Apart from the implications on the birds, you are breaking the law and people do get prosecuted for it. If you’re lucky enough to have a pond in your garden or any baby frogs, try to introduce some ground-hugging plants to your garden which will provide a damp, shady environment for any frogs that might be there.

I’m a great believer in just leaving patches of long grass in your garden if you can at all as so much can go on here. Frogs are protected because it’s cool and damp. Ground nesting birds can nest in long grass for the babies to be born. And by leaving grass to grow you’re leading to the emergence of more plant life. More species will emerge in the long grass which can help pollinators and the flora in the garden.

In addition, the long grass will also be there for bees to nest, so that little area of unmowed grass can do a huge amount of good. If you can, consider leaving a little bit of food or water out for baby hedgehogs or any baby wildlife to help too. You want to be cognizant of the fact that you don’t draw any vermin in, but you can purchase little hedgehog feeders to get around this.

ENJOY YOUR GARDEN

These are the months to really enjoy your garden and admire your efforts over the last few months. Have your barbecue, have people over. It’s time to sit back with a glass of wine and take in the beautiful explosion of colour and vibrancy.

For more tips, follow Peter, The Irish Gardener at PeterDowdall.com.

Not sure where to go with your garden? The right place to start is an online garden consultation with garden design expert, Peter Dowdall, theirishgardener.com/ products/virtual-garden-design-consultation