Maintenance for established gardens
JUST BEFORE everything springs into life, now is a good time to turn your attention to your garden supports.
Ensure that all your trellising and canes are sturdy and in the right position before you begin to grow climbing plants as this will save a lot of faff later on when the plants get bigger and the foliage more unmanageable.
Remember to dead-head your spring flowering bulbs, such as daffodils, and if you haven’t already, plant out summer flowering bulbs now that significant danger of frost has passed. Plan which bulbs to plant to ensure successive flowering throughout the spring and summer rather than having one burst of colour and nothing either side of it.
If chosen carefully you will have colour throughout spring all the way through to early autumn.
Now is a great time to sow hardy annual seeds in the ground, they are cheap and very effective in creating a splash of colour throughout the garden.
They can also be ordered online very easily, and bigger supermarkets have them on sale.
Try sowing Calendula (marigold), Centaurea cyanus (cornflower), Nigella (love-in-amist) and Nemophila (baby blue-eyes) for some lovely soft and naturalistic borders.
These flowers are great for pollinators so you will have the pleasure of attracting our small winged friends to your garden.
In times of crisis people often think of “digging for victory”, so why not turn your hand to edible crops in the garden?
Salad leaves can be grown in the smallest of containers, along with herbs and tomato seeds which can be started out now.
If there are any lingering dead seed heads or foliage from last season’s growth, make sure these are pruned back. But with waste disposal centres closed for the foreseeable future, be sure to put your green waste on the compost heap.
My final piece of advice to everyone whether just starting out or if you’re an experienced gardener, is to just enjoy it and make mistakes.
It’s the best way to learn and we’ve got nothing but time to simply enjoy nature and its wonders.
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