Springing into action

With the arrival of March, herbaceous planting and dividing your perennials are on the agenda

Three years ago we took a Sunday afternoon family trip to a nursery in the hills. I spied a nicely mature Japanese maple, and squeezing it into a very impractical sports car, I got it back to the garden and planted it where it could be viewed from the living room.

I was warned at the time that it was too open a site, quite exposed to the wind and without any shade or shelter. I wouldn’t listen as I chose design considerations over the wellbeing of the plant.

It’s grown a bit but it hasn’t been happy. The leaves are often scorched by the end of the summer and I’ve always looked on in regret at my decision.

In the days before The Beast From The East came prowling, the sun was shining and it was our first full day of gardening. Still being the dormant season I knew it would be the perfect time to move this tree to a better place.

It’s not a job I would tackle if the tree was any larger – this maple is about 4ft high – or had been in the ground for more than three years as the root ball would simply be too big to handle without machinery. While it’s OK to cut some roots, you need to gather a big enough rootball that incorporates the tips of the roots as this is where absorption of water and nutrients occur.

I also like to do this job as close to spring as possible so that as soon as the soil warms up the roots will start growing. Hopefully by the time the leaves start to unfurl, the tree will have settled in.

I prepared the new planting hole first – this time in a sheltered dappled shade area of the garden, adding in some fresh compost – before digging up the tree and rehoming it. You could also add in some mycorrhizal fungi or root builder to give roots a head start.

It’s also a good time to get some herbaceous planting done. I decided to enhance the area around the maple tree with some suitable shade-loving plants.

Brunnera is great for dry shade and the cultivar Jack Frost with its silvery leaves is superb for brightening dark areas. In a month or so it will start to produce bright blue forget-me-notlike flowers. I also put in some foxglove, acanthus and epimedium which are all plants that should be happy in this position.

What other jobs can you be tackling in March? If your soil is not frozen or waterlogged, you can lift and divide perennials.

This could be for the same reason that I lifted the maple – they’re not doing well in that area or you just want to make some changes in your planting scheme.

The division of them will create new vigorous plants, especially with those such as aster and phlox that tend to grow in clumps producing new growth around the outside.

Gently tease apart the plant into new plantlets. You can discard the old centre and replant your new stock immediately in a well-prepared soil with some slow-release fertiliser.

Perennials with deep tap roots can’t be divided so leave the likes of oriental poppies, lupins and eryngiums alone and some such as hellebores, dierama and aconitum prefer not to be disturbed at all.

Other perennials and grasses that you have left over winter can be cut back to ground level now and the rotting vegetation removed.

I skipped cutting back the penstemon – although it was very

Japanese maples provide a stunning centrepiece to a border if they are planted in the right position Now is the best time to move plants and shrubs if you want to re-model your garden

Divide plants such as phlox to create an expanse of colour