New! Gardening Column

In a new column, Wendy Simpson of Craigievar Gardeners offers seasonal tips to help you get the best from your patch, large or small...

What to do in your garden for spring...

First things first! Spring-clean your garden before your bulbs come up. Clear borders of winter debris, leaves and last year’s perennial foliage. Repair retaining walls and stepping stones. Fix and reseal wooden trellises, raised beds and planters. As your bulbs emerge, feed the soil with an inch or two of compost.

Early spring represents pruning time for shrubs that will flower on new wood (this year’s growth), such as buddleias and potentillas. Do this when you’re sure that heavy frosts have passed. Hard-prune hybrid tea and floribunda roses by cutting back to outward-facing buds. Don’t prune early flowerers or shrubs that flower on last year’s growth: leave the pruning of shrubs like weigelas, forsythias, lilacs and azaleas until after they’ve finished flowering.

If you have perennials that are large enough to split, you can divide those that flower in summer and early autumn. Don’t split any that bloom in spring – leave that until autumn.

Depending on the weather, you can start sowing in mid-April, especially in a polytunnel. Plant early potatoes, onion sets and asparagus, and sow spinach, kale, salad leaves and early carrots in trays for later planting out. Later, outdoors, sow perennials and hardy annuals and plant lily bulbs.

Rake out the moss thatch in your lawn and set your mower blades high for the first few cuts. Next stop: summer!

SG

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