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Winter Season – Garden Maintenance

winter-season-maintenance

Prepare your garden for the worst of the winter weather

  • Get inspiration from plant magazines and order vegetable seeds ready for the growing year.
  • Mend things, such as broken fences and consider laying paths, patios and decking.
  • Check tree stakes to make sure none have broken – ensure tree ties are not too tight.
  • Move deciduous trees or shrubs while the plants are dormant.
  • Plant bare-root fruit trees if the soil is not frozen or too wet.
  • Restore hedges and overgrown trees.
  • Turn over compost heap to encourage it to break down quicker.
  • Put food and water out for birds to help sustain them – even in winter they need to bathe.
  • Install solar panels on shed roof, which can be used for battery operated machinery, such as: hedge trimmers, mowers and strimmers.
  • Take hardwood cuttings of fruit bushes.
  • Prune soft fruit bushes and freestanding apple and pear trees.
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Autumn Season – Garden Maintenance

Autumn leaves

Autumn garden tips to help prepare your garden for winter!

  • Scarify and Aerate the lawn.
  • Divide perennials to reinvigorate plants for next year.
  • Install water butt to collect rain water over winter.
  • Plant trees giving enough time to establish before winter.
  • Cover tender plants with fleece – or move into greenhouse, conservatory or shed.
  • Plant bulbs, such as daffodils, tulips, crocus and hyacinth for spring.
  • Collect fallen leaves on the lawn, add to compost heap.
  • Provide shelter for hedgehogs.
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Summer Season – Garden Maintenance

sunflower

The garden is in full boom and colour yet tasks still grow. Here is a list to help keep borders and lawns gorgeous.

•   Mow the lawn up to once a week unless there are droughts.

•   Deadhead flowers regularly to encourage new blooms.

•   Water accordingly and check whether plants are drying out. New plantings, containers and hanging baskets most need an extra splash of water during dry periods.

•   Weed out deep rooted perennials and catch annual weeds before they set seed and spread further.

•   Feed plants and lawns with plant feed, comfrey or nettle tea to encourage lush, green growth, (every couple of weeks).

•   Mulch wherever there is bare soil to suppress the weeds.

•   Leave water out for birds and bugs – in mid-summer water supplies often dry out.

•   Label your herbaceous perennials now before they die back, if you are planning to redesign the border, so that you know what to save and what to get rid of.