Into action
With the US’s new dawn, there’s even more of a reason to head across the pond says Jane Memmler
tal grasses, and cutting back flowering plants after blooming season.
It’s handy to have a large durable bucket to collect weeds, mix compost and fertilizer in and drop damaging snails and slugs into.
Check your lawnmower engine and if necessary have it serviced before grass growth takes off. Always change the oil before grass cutting gets underway. If you haven’t been out much, there’s probably a lot of tidying up to do, cutting back decaying perennials, weeding and mulching.
If you are working in areas where you have spring bulbs emerging, you’ll will need to adopt a delicate approach so as not to damage new foliage. It’s a job I love – I pop my earphones in and enjoy getting to grips with the borders again, usually accompanied by a robin redbreast on the lookout for worms.
As the soil thaws, it’s a good time to do some moving of deciduous shrubs while they are still dormant. All of us make mistakes – perhaps planting too close to another shrub or simply in the wrong place so now’s the time to shift things around. Replant at exactly the same depth as the plant was in its previous position as planting too deep can kill trees and shrubs.
Depending on the size of the shrub, this can be hard work so pace yourself and be realistic about what you can achieve or what you will need assistance with.
February and March are an excellent time of year to prune many shrubs to ensure they look and perform their best for the rest of the year. When shrubs are leafless, it’s much easier to assess their overall outline and see exactly what you are doing.
To encourage the best flowering possible on deciduous shrubs that flower on new wood later in the summer, an annual shearing is necessary. Established deciduous flowering shrubs should be pruned back now to 2-3 buds of the previous season’s growth and remove about a fifth of the old stems. This will encourage the shrub to produce vigorous shoots that will carry flowers in summer such as buddleja davidii, deciduous ceanothus, perovskia, ceratostigma, cotinus, hardy fuchsia, lavatera and spiraea japonica.
What you don’t want to do is to remove flower buds that are about to open – eg forsythia, ribes and kerria, so leave these shrubs alone until after they have flowered.
Once you get out, you’ll see there’s plenty to get stuck into – happy gardening!
As the soil thaws, it’s a good time to replant deciduous shrubs
We may be familiar with some of the iconic sights, the dramatic landscapes, even the streets, yet many of us have never quite made the trip.
The sheer scale of the country and the dizzying 50 different states to choose from, many with their own laws, is daunting in itself.
Then it’s deciding whether you want to tick off the top city sights, head into the vast great outdoors or do a little of both.
To help guide the first-time visitor, we’ve selected our favourite must-sees for when we can travel again.