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25th October, 2009
FOR A BEAUTIFUL WINTER GARDEN
SEASONAL GARDENING TIPS AND ADVICE FROM LEWISPOL LANDSCAPE DESIGN & BUILD
At this time of year, people often give up on there gardens until next spring, but there is a lot that can be done to keep your garden looking beautiful over winter. As landscape design and build professionals our focus is not necessarily on the horticultural side of gardening. To be honest the best gardening advice can be obtained for free from the monthly gardening calendar at the Royal Horticultural Society website – www.rhs.org.uk . . . More
So here are some key ideas for keeping on top of things in the garden:-
Keep on top of leaves falling. Dying leaves can damage lawns and make patios and paths look messy. Once all the leaves have fallen, perhaps consider giving patios, paths and wooden decks a jetwash to spruce them up.
Autumn is generally considered the best time for planting containerised plants. If you just want to focus on the winter ahead, consider planting some winter flowering flowers, shrubs or bulbs. Obvious contenders here are Hellebores, Christmas box and snowdrops.
Lawns can benefit from a good scarify with a sprung rake to pull out thatch, and then an autumn feed to rekindle the grass. It’s a good time to seed any bare patches, and if your lawn is moist and suffers from a little waterlogging then you could consider aeration pushing in a fork to open up the ground and perhaps a dressing of sharp sand.
Most of your flowering perennials will be looking unsightly by now, so these can be cut back near to the base and some may benefit from a little mulching with compost or bark chip over winter. But if a perennial has a good architectural shape to it do consider leaving it until spring before cutting back. Ornamental grasses for instance, can often look great over winter with their golden stems.
Many deciduous shrubs can now be tidied up once the leaves have fallen, so consider the shape of the plant and how best to prune them to suit the garden. Many evergreen shrubs can be tidied a little, but be cautious if you know it is a winter flowering shrub as you will probably loose the flowers if you prune in autumn.
If you have any bamboo in the garden consider pleaching to make a strong architectural statement. This is removing all the lower leaves from the stems to expose them. Can look very beautiful! With regard to bamboos don’t believe any textbooks which suggest these plants are well-behaved as they definitely are not. I have just been to see a client who we planted golden bamboo for some years ago, and he is still having problems with new bamboo shoots appearing two or three metres away in the garden. It is worth knowing that there are a number of plants that spread with rhizomes (these look like roots, but are actually fleshy stems that travel underground from the plant and are capable of producing new plants). If you have plants in your garden doing this it is worth tidying up these unruly roots by digging down and removing them with a good sharp spade or preferably a mattock.
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PAST ARTICLES
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22nd April, 2009 - HEADING FOR SUMMER
With the sun shining everyone has a chance to enjoy the outdoor life. In your garden, it is now time for a bit of tweaking so that everything can be perfect for summer. If your’e only just getting out into the garden for the first time this year, and feeling it’s been neglected, its not too late to get out for a busy weekend and have a good therapeutic tidy up!
Lawns should be cut regularly at this time in the year. Once every two weeks is fine, and if you really want to go for it, once a week. Have a look at the condition of the lawn to check the growth and drainage. Consider adding weed/feed from a garden centre if the growth is not as good as you hoped, and look into spiking areas that don’t drain so well with the prongs of a fork.
Most plants are coming into growth by now, so apart from general weeding, there is not too much pruning to do. Anything that flowered early on last month, especially yellow flowering shrubs such as Acacia dealata otherwise known as Mimosa, or the old-fashioned favourite Forsythia, can now be pruned and shaped as you like. A number of evergreen shrubs can be pruned and tidied up in May, in particular shrubs such as Viburnum tinus which should just about have finished flowering.
Unfortunately, weeding really is the key at this time of year. Especially around your newly growing perennial plants; just so you don’t loose track of where all your favoured plants are. It’s a bit of a job, but there is a lot to be said for mulching a garden with a layer of compost, bark chippings or similar. For a start mulching at least 5cm (2 inches) deep will help reduce the work of weeding by suppressing them. Secondly, it helps improve soil fertility and therefore helps your plants grow. And thirdly, and perhaps most importantly it helps to keep the soil moist in these dry periods. If you do consider mulching your garden planting, do make sure the area is thoroughly soaked before you put the mulch down. And if your’e considering a large new area of planting in the garden at this time of year, do consider the merits of introducing an irrigation system, to ensure their survival and speed up growth.
In general, just make sure you get out into the garden and enjoy the coming months. If you see something that doesn’t look right and you have the energy; give it a quick tidy up. And always consider just sitting back, relaxing and watching your garden grow.
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4th March, 2009 - GETTING READY FOR SPRING
What a winter! It finally is showing hope of becoming a distant memory. March is one of our favourite months in gardening. It's time to get ready for the first hot days when you're so thrilled to have a garden to enjoy the weather.
There are a few important and very easy garden jobs that must be caught in March.
The dead leaves of tall grasses must be cut down right to the base now, till it resembles a curled up hedgehog! This allows the new growth to shine through and not be ruined all year by growing through the dead old leaves. If you leave this job out it is near impossibly to fix later.
Evergreen ferns should be treated in the same way, removing last years green but tatty leaves so the plant puts all the new spring energy into producing bigger and glossier new fronds. Deciduous ferns can simply be stripped of dead matter making sure to leave the crown above ground.
If you have any Cornus, Dogwood shrubs in your garden and would like to encourage its bright bark then now is the time to cut vigorously back, potentially down to the ground to encourage bright red or yellow shoots.
Lavender that so easily becomes bare at the base can in late march be gently trimmed with scissors, not too deep, just to encourage denser growth. The main clipping time is after flowering in late September.
And of course the general tidying up new planting and mulching ready for the good days.