A GOLDEN RULE

Remember to take care of edges and hedges and you can’t go far wrong, plus your garden will always look immaculate to the untrained eye

Iwas lucky enough to experience one of those rare, blissful moments of peace and calm in the garden the other day. One of the things that makes them so special is they always come unannounced. It was the early morning walk with the dog, when the sun had just risen and after a month of cold, frost and snow. Instead of seeing white and grey, my eyes were reintroduced to some colour. The grass was green again and the soil a beautiful brown.

I didn’t realise how much I had longed to see this.

There was a nice wind too, so it felt that the wetness of the melt was also drying out a bit and, along with the blue sky, I actually felt like I wanted to spend a few hours in the garden. Which I duly did.

I started off with the intention of tidying up an area at the bottom of my garden where there is an old yew tree, snowdrops grow underneath it.

It’s a nice, wee display of the common type, Galanthus nivalis, which we can see from our sitting room window. On my first day back out in the garden in the new year, it felt like a nice place to start.

By the end of the day though, I still hadn’t got around to it, as it turned into one of those days where one task just naturally led to another, and by the time I was ready, it was starting to get dark.

First, I thought I would quickly turn the compost heap. It’s not been done for a good few weeks and it’s a key job, worth doing to get air into the heap and help the decomposition process.

Then I saw some of the areas of herbaceous plants in my borders weren’t looking so tidy and with the wind there was the risk of it been blown all around the garden, so I decided I would head there next.

I didn’t go for a complete herbaceous tidy. The spent foliage of plants like Hemerocalis, Hosta and Persicaria ‘Red Dragon’ – which has lovely maroon and green patterned leaves – seems to drop to the ground and at this point needs a good tidying up.

So with my secateurs I cut all the foliage back to the ground and cleared away to my compost heap, which was now good and ready to be topped up.

All the while I kept trying to ignore the grass edges of this border. I could see they desperately needed trimmed, it’s amazing how grass edges still manage to keep growing even in the colder months.

It was still in my intention to get down to the bottom of the garden and on to the snowdrops but I couldn’t stop myself. So it was back to the shed to look out the edging shears and trimming the edge took the next half hour.

I’m glad I did though as even after being a keen gardener for 30 years, I still can’t get over how neat lawn edges can lift the appearance of the whole garden.

It’s the same with neat hedges. Just remember the saying ‘edges and hedges’. It doesn’t matter how bad your garden is to the untrained eye, it will look immaculate.

My career up until now has pretty much been based on this saying!

Not all the herbaceous got the chop. Each to their own. Some gardeners will go for a complete tidy while others, like myself, like to leave some of last year’s foliage in place to give the garden a bit of interest over winter.

Now I leave the likes of Sedum, Perovskia, Veronicastrum and Echinacea foliage uncut until the end of winter, as it is woodier so stays erect.

I make sure to tidy before it gets trickier with the new foliage starting to shoot.

Leaving your herbaceous uncut over winter is also beneficial to wildlife, providing shelter and food. I used to leave everything, until I heard gardening great Jim McColl say, “yes, but remember that also means a place for those that we’d rather not encourage like snugs and snails” which in spring will devour the emerging new shoots.

That’s why I go for the balanced approach of tidying the foliage that lays on the ground and leaving the rest.

Now the winter white has vanished from the garden (for now anyway), some of the damage from the cold snap is visible. The foliage on two shrubs has turned black. This is the result of the extremely cold temperatures we had – got down to below -10 degrees Celsius.

They don’t look good at the moment but I’m hoping they’ll recover in the spring. Fingers crossed I’ll have made it down to the bottom of the garden by then.

WELCOME: Tulips making their way through the snow after the cold spell.

Red Dragon – which has maroon and green leaves – needs a good tidying up.

Grass always seem to keep growing, despite the cold.