Gardening

Gardening Tips and Advice from The Potting Shed of the Gentleman Gardener

It has been a very wet start to the gardening year, with above average rainfall for January and February, making the ground heavy and boggy underfoot.

You can enjoy timely maintenance tasks now. Raise any containers, that are not on feet or bricks, to protect them from late frosts and lag them with bubble wrap or straw and hessian; even hardy plants need protection in really cold weather, just like us.

Take the opportunity to make a fresh start: clear all the waste material from the beds and load it on the compost heap ready for next year’s planting, clean your gardening tools and sharpen and clean your mower and shears.

Spring is just around the corner, officially arriving on Sunday 20th March, so bring some colour back to your garden by planting fragrant flowering shrubs such as witch hazel and bright winter pansies.

Take time to give your lawn some TLC, and re-sow any bald or sparse patches that have appeared, to make your grass look its magnificent best come the summer months. Create your own floral masterpiece in time for summer: pot your plants now for your hanging baskets, containers and bedding so you can plant away when better early summer weather is with us again, as it surely will be.

Please enjoy your garden and the therapeutic benefits gardening brings. If you’re like me, never cease to be amazed by the wonder of the endless colours, smells and textures. Or, if you’re more of a vegetable gardener, all of the tastes and flavours that return to our garden every year.

Gardening is unique in many ways, not only for the personal aura it brings but because it is a joy to which there is no end.

What a writer writes remains on the page, as does the painter’s brushwork, the architect’s building or the composer’s score – a garden is temporal.

Happy gardening – The Gentleman Gardener